


Warning Shot

by PyroQueenOfFire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Also this is graphic at times, F/M, From gore to language to violence to sex, I came up with Lana way back when the pilot first aired, I don't wanna censor stuff, Instead of moving things from fanfiction.net i'm just redoing things, Now that the show is practically over she got redone, She's been a work in progress ever since, The rating is the rating for a lot of future stuff planned, This is what is coming out of it and yes I am starting at the beginning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:35:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyroQueenOfFire/pseuds/PyroQueenOfFire
Summary: The past catches up with Sam and Dean, but is it possible the past could really save them? Is it possible that destiny might not actually be a complete pile of crap? The Winchesters are about to find out.
Relationships: All the other relationships are mostly platonic so I mean these are the main ones, Bobby Singer/Original Female Character(s), Dean Winchester/Original Female Character(s), Had to add Bobby because there is a smidge of that, John Winchester/Mary Winchester, Sam Winchester/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 2





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I only own Lana and the other OC's I make up for story lines. Bree owns Lily and let me use her. Everything else is owned by their respective owners, I just like writing the Winchesters happy. So without further ado, her is my Lana and Dean redo featuring Sam and Lily. Just keep in mind that this story has language, violence, gore, sex and dark themes. If that offends you then please do not proceed any further. If you ever want to see Fan Vids of them, you can go here: http://www.youtube.com/user/LittleByLittleINC. If you ever want to see Fan Edits of them, you can go here: http://www.wxrningshot.tumblr.com/.

Lily Harte was working on a term paper when Sam came into the room of their apartment and smiled at her. Meeting Sam here at Stanford had felt almost cosmic, but it was mainly because she felt like they fit together. She didn’t know what the feeling was when she had met him, but she just knew. Then all this demon stuff had come up, and it turned out that they were connected for so many other reasons.

“So, you’re heading off with Dean?” she asked him, smiling when he leaned down to kiss her, returning the kiss gently. “How long are you going to be gone? You have an interview on Monday. This isn’t because you’re freaking out about it, is it? Because honestly, you’re going to do great, so you shouldn’t self-sabotage.”

Sam chuckled and rested his hands on her shoulders. “You worry too much. He just wants to find our Dad and you…”

“Yeah,” she replied with a nod. “Sadly I know about hunting, yes.”

Her mother had died the same way that Sam’s had, and when she had admitted about her father’s drunken rambles about a ‘Yellow-Eyed Man’, they had gotten onto the same page. She had learned things about life that perhaps she hadn’t wanted to know, but it had brought them closer together. Now Dean was here to get Sam to find their Dad, and Lily knew he needed to go but she didn’t want him too. At the same time, she had a paper to finish and she couldn’t do that while she was helping them to do what? Do a hunt? She didn’t really hunt.

“I feel bad leaving you here,” Sam admitted as he packed a bag.

“You don’t have to feel bad. I know you aren’t taking off forever and when you get back, I’ll still be here waiting for you,” Lily promised, stealing another kiss and then turning back to her computer. “So do what you gotta do and come back to me.”

Smiling at that, Sam promised her that he’d be back soon, and headed out to meet Dean at the ‘67 Chevy Impala he drove, and he tossed his duffel into the back seat. He was glad that Dean and Lily had met, and he hopped into the passenger seat, shaking his head as Dean wiggled his eyebrows at him.

“She’s adorable,” Dean told him, shaking his head. “And like a foot shorter than you.”

Sam smiled and nodded. “She’s perfect, so be nice.”

“I am _always_ nice,” Dean responded, shaking his head at his brother.

“Except when you’re an ass,” Sam replied, smiling a little more.

They both smiled a little as Dean got them out on the road, both of them getting pretty deep into a hunt before Sam’s cell phone rang. Normally he’d screen calls while on a hunt, but when Sam saw that it was Lily, he picked it up almost immediately, Dean giving him a look while they were researching.

“Sam? Sam I need you, okay?” Lily told him, her voice incredibly panicked.

Sam was suddenly incredibly alert and he sat up straight. “Lily? What’s wrong?”

“He’s here. Sam, I think he’s here,” Lily replied, but the line went dead.

He knew exactly who she was talking about, and he started to grab his things, telling Dean that they needed to go because this was important. Then he started rambling off the things that Lily had told him after that hunt on campus had bonded them, and now Dean was annoyed. Dean had always firmly believed that getting close was dangerous, but here Sam was, bonding with someone that had lost their mother in the same way that Sam had...and that couldn’t just be some kind of coincidence could it?

Not to mention, it meant that the Yellow-Eyed Demon was closer than it had been in ages, and Dean hurriedly drove them back to the Stanford campus. When they got to the off campus apartment buildings, Sam hurried in to try and get to Lily, seeing the distress that the apartment was in. He started calling out her name while Dean searched for any sign of the demon, Sam finding Lily just as their bedroom went up into flames.

Sam knew he would die to protect her, and wrapped her up in his strong arms for just a moment before they fled, Dean following them out. It was obvious that this was some kind of message, Lily burying her face in Sam’s chest as he ran his hands up and down her back and kissed the top of her head. Dean watched as Sam calmed her down, knowing that there was no getting back into hunting without Lily coming too, but was that safe? They were all going to need to talk about this and figure out a plan.

\-----

“You’re a weapon,” came the throaty voice of a demon.

They were tied to a chair, blood coming out of their nose and bit trickling out of the corner of their mouth. The man looked a tiny bit worked over, sitting over that Devil’s trap and shaking their head at the dark haired woman in front of him. He only knew what he’d figured out as she hunted him down, and now it was time to try and save his own skin.

The thing was: Lana Meckenzie knew what she was...well sort of.

All her life she’d been told that she was a witch, and that was why she had powers that her younger half sister, Annie, didn’t have, but it wasn’t until she was in High School that she really sat down and realized that her powers didn’t match up. That she was pretty sure she was doing things by thinking them, and that she had done things before. It wasn’t until recently that she had done something on a hunt and point blank asked her mother what the Hell had happened and who the Hell she was.

Her mind had been somewhat blown when her mother had launched into this story, about how a lot of what she had already told Lana was true. Back in Florence’s days of hunting, she used to hunt with Mary Campbell, who was her best friend, if hunters could really keep that kind of thing. All Mary had ever wanted was to get out, and after her parents and John Winchester were killed and Mary made a deal with the Yellow Eyed Demon to bring John back to life, Florence vowed to keep Mary and John safe and to hunt down the son of a bitch that had forced Mary’s hand in the first place...but that wasn’t how the story was going to play out.

Instead, some time when Dean--Mary and John’s first born--was very little, Florence ended up drunk and having a really rough night of dead ends, having a one night stand and not thinking about it again until she was pregnant. It was nice to be pregnant when Mary was, both of them looking forward to having kids, Sam born a couple of months before Lana was. That was when it happened. Florence held that little baby girl in her arms for the first time, and her eyes flashed yellow. It was only then that Florence realized she hadn’t hit a dead end, the demon was just one step ahead of her, and whatever his endgame was, he hadn’t meant to have a kid with a human. Probably thought he couldn’t while he was possessing some poor bastard.

Everything got worse when Mary was killed.

Yellow Eyes came back to collect and Florence wasn’t there when she needed to be there. She heard about the house fire over the police scanner, and was to John and the boys that second that she could be, John having to stop her from running into the house after Mary. It was only after Florence took him and the kids to Bobby’s, that John was let in on the whole hunting thing, but never once did Florence ever betray Mary, and she would keep her secret as a hunter with her to the grave: something she wanted Lana to do as well.

Growing up with the boys only lasted so long, as Florence and John had their own leads to trying to find the son of a bitch that killed Mary. That, and Florence wasn’t sure if she had given birth to the antichrist or not when Lana started being able to do things with her mind. All Florence wanted was revenge and a normal life, and she settled down with Alan, eventually having another daughter when Lana was three, and while she was all human, Florence loved her daughters equally and taught them how to hunt.

Alan lost his life to Yellow Eyes as well, him coming to call when Florence got too close, but he could feel that something was wrong...that something was _his_. There was a five year old little girl that smelled like him, and when her eyes flashed yellow at him in her fear and in feeling her mother’s fear, he knew that a wrench had been thrown into his plans and in retaliation to Florence warding the children off from him, he killed Alan in front of him and fled, vowing to find Lana again even though he couldn’t find her location thanks to her being part human. The act only made Florence want to hunt him more.

Sometimes Lana hunted with the Winchesters, but Sam eventually went off to college, and then Annie followed suit, hating the horrors of the world and wanting her own life. Florence didn’t mind the way that John did, and Annie got to do her thing, Lana now sometimes hunting just with Dean, but before this hunt right now? She’d let one of her best friends be bait on a hunt and this demon before her had _murdered her_. So she was upset, and she was itching to use her powers if she could start to get a better hold on them.

“What I am is your worst nightmare,” she replied, letting her eyes go yellow.

That stunned the man for a second. “Azazel? I did what you asked though…”

The fact that he thought that she was her father--she was glad she knew his name now--and the fact that her father had been behind Chelsea’s death, only made her start to chat Latin. She probably could have exorcised him with a thought, but it felt so much more satisfying to hear him scream and plead before he was in Hell, and she realized what she had done. They would know she was around, or they would assume they had defied her father’s orders. Either way, Lana needed to stop being so Goddamn reckless.

\-----

Lily had been acclimating to hunting pretty well, actually, already having done two hunts with the boys before the weird stuff started.

It was pretty easy for her to fall into a good rhythm with Sam, but with Dean, things were still on their way. He treated her like a little sister and she enjoyed it and the teasing even though she acted like she didn’t, but he also sometimes treated her like she didn’t know what she was doing. While that was sometimes true, Lily was a fast learner and she was proud of what she had accomplished so far.

“What’s up?” she asked Dean as she checked his phone.

Dean took a deep breath. “I...you remember Bobby Singer?”

“Of course. He keeps you boys on your toes without your Dad around,” she replied with a smile, but it faded as she saw Dean’s look. “What happened? Is it your Dad?”

“No, it’s uh...it’s Lana,” Dean admitted, looking at Lily and catching her look.

Before he could say much more, Sam had come into the motel room with coffees in a drink tray, and he smiled at them, only for the smile to be wiped off of his face too. So, he handed Dean and Lily their drinks and then sat down, asking what was wrong before he took a sip of his own coffee and gave his brother his full attention.

“You remember Lana, right? Her Mom hunted with Dad?” Dean asked, nodding when Sam did.

“I remember. I remember that when we were five, Florence took her elsewhere then we only saw her in our teens every once in a while.” Sam explained, looking to Lily when she looked confused. “She, uh, her Mom knew our Mom. When she died, Florence and Dad kind of got deep into the revenge of the demon that did it. I haven’t seen Lana since we were 16 and she was making eyes at Dean all hunt.”

Dean rolled his eyes, hoping he wasn’t blushing. “Well, last I saw her was about two weeks before I came to Stanford to get you. She was frustrated and she was deep in a hunt, and we ran into each other at the bar she was getting information from. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of years before then and like...damn, Sammy.”

“Alright, ew, but also where are you going with this?” Sam asked as Lily laughed.

“One thing led to another and we hooked up,” Dean admitted, catching the look Sam gave him. “Look, I know, okay? Banging our fellow hunters should not be a thing, but we were fine. This is the job, we needed an outlet, and I don’t know. She seemed upset about something her mother had told her, but I never got what that something was out of her because…”

“Oh my God,” Lily laughed, shaking her head and drinking her coffee. “Wow, you are definitely the Dean that I have been getting to know. How does Bobby factor into this?”

“He just called and said Lana’s friend died on a hunt and she’s in a bad way,” Dean admitted, and he knew how that sounded too.

Out of all the people that Bobby could had called, he called Lana and Lana hadn’t even reached out to Dean, but she’d reached out to Bobby? That kind of made sense because Dean had always thought that Florence and Bobby had a thing, but he felt compelled to go and see if Lana was alright and maybe help her finish this hunt of hers. Revenge was a hard thing to navigate around sometimes and he certainly didn’t want Lana to die.

“Then we should go see her,” Lily piped up, moving to pack. “Come on boys, let’s go.”

\-----

Lana blotted her wet eyes with the sleeve of her black dress, groaning as Jennifer Delkan came into the room and smiled sadly. They were ready for Chelsea’s wake, and while Lana wasn’t sure she wanted to face anybody, she knew that she was going to have to. After all, it was her fault that Chelsea was dead even though it had all been ruled as an accident. She was in an alleyway, her body mutilated, and everyone assumed it was just some random crime.

A demon had done it, but Lana couldn’t tell people that.

Instead, she had to sit with all of these people that had known her, and look Chelsea’s parents in the eyes, and act like she was so sorry for this accident. Jennifer knew about hunting and what Lana did, and she knew that Lana felt guilty, but even Jennifer didn’t blame her. She also didn’t know the thoughts that were running through her mind these days because Lana didn’t know who to confide in about anything other than Annie. Of course she had to tell her sister about all of it.

“How many more times are you going to apply your mascara?” Jennifer asked, reaching over to tuck a strand of hair behind Lana’s ear. “Come on. We gotta get back downstairs and mingle with people. Chelsea’s Mom has shut down and I don’t know where her Dad ran off to, but he had tears in his eyes.”

Nodding, Lana got up and followed Jennifer back downstairs, trying to throw on a fake smile before she started to mingle. She and Jennifer wanted to take as much pressure off of Chelsea’s parents as they could, and then there was a knock on the door and Lana answered it, her face lighting up a little when she saw Dean there. Sam and Lily were there too, and she was happy to see Sam and interested in Lily, going for Sam first for the hug, which annoyed Dean, but he didn’t want her to know that.

“Holy shit you got so tall!” Lana exclaimed, pulling back and then looking at Lily. “And you are?”

Lily held her hand out. “Lily Harte.”

“My girlfriend,” Sam told her, smiling when Lana went in for a hug with Lily too.

“I feel invisible,” Dean explained, looking Lana in the eye and smiling a little when she smirked at him. “You look like crap.”

“I feel like crap too,” she told him, arms wrapping around his shoulders before she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

He smiled a little at that, arms moving around her too as he held her protectively close, knowing she needed the comfort right now. It was hard to lose someone close to you to this job, which was why Dean had all his rules about ties, but he also liked Lana a lot. She held her own in every fight, had kicked his ass a time or two, and even after hooking up, they still got the job done and they could work together.

“You getting snot on me?” he asked, ruining the moment but laughing when she punched him in the arm and pulled back.

“All over you because you deserve it,” she responded before she took a breath. “I know why you’re all here, but I’ve got the hunt handled--I already did it. Now I’ve gotta handle this.”

Lily nodded at her and reached for her hand. “And I know you don’t know me that well, but we’re here to support you. Plus, I want to hear embarrassing childhood stories about them, so I have ulterior motives.”

“Oh, I have lots of those,” Lana perked up a little, tugging Lily closer. “Come on. Let’s get some sweets and we can get to know each other better.”


	2. Cool and Gross All at Once

Having Lily and Lana bond felt strange to Dean, but Sam kind of enjoyed it because it was nice having his childhood friend and his girlfriend get along. They had a lot more in common than he had thought too, and after the wake, Lily had come to the motel and told them that Lana was going to be coming with them. That made Dean head over to her house and ask her why she’d wanna be stuck with him all day every day, to which Lana told him to stop flattering himself.

Their bickering amused the other two, but they really were quite the four person team and it showed in the way they started to hunt things together. Everyone brought their own personal flair, and honestly? It was nice to know that someone was always watching their back--plus now they constantly had back up and what was wrong with that? Whenever one of them needed to take a break, there were three other people to rely on to get the job done.

“I don’t know why you’re fighting this, Dean,” Lana sighed, shaking her head. “It is Autumn. I am going to consume as much pumpkin-everything as there is. Either step in line, or ignore it.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “You made me stop at a _Starbucks_. You know how I feel about that.”

“I do, but the other coffee place didn’t have pumpkin yet,” Lana shrugged before she smirked this time. “Also, you didn’t have to humor me and leave that place to come, did you?”

He didn’t even want to admit that she was right in this instance, and instead, they moved out to the Impala and Lana passed coffee around as Sam held up a newspaper article. Lily was in the backseat on her phone looking some things up, and Lana took the newspaper from Sam.

“Alright so this guy Dustin...says he died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob,” Lana said as she kept reading, trying to take it all in.

Dean made a face. “I’m sorry...what?”

“Human mad cow disease,” Sam put in, speaking up as Dean started to protest. “Mad cow disease causes massive brain degeneration, Dean. Not just that but it takes months, even years, for the damage to appear.”

“But it sounds like this Dustin guy, his brain disintegrated in about an hour. Maybe less,” Lana added, handing the article back to Sam.

Lily nodded and poked her head out of the car. “It is definitely weird: our kind of weird. I really don’t think it was Creutzfeldt-Jakob.”

“You all need to start just calling it ‘Mad Cow Disease’.” Dean told them, shaking his head.

It was one thing having Sam constantly telling him things he didn't know, but now Lana and Lily were doing it too, and siding with each other all the time. Not to mention, Sam had started sitting in the backseat with Lily while Lana took shotgun and that meant her touching all of his stuff. At first she started trying to listen to the radio, but then when Dean put his foot down about the cassette tapes, she instead started to rummage through his approved music, and playing what she liked the best out of it. Lana was even starting to pick up cassette tapes when she could find them, and trying to get his permission to add them to the pile.

The Beatles tape she’d picked had gotten approved.

Driving to Oklahoma, the car ride was actually pretty peaceful, Lily and Lana singing along to some of the songs, and Dean not being told by Sam to turn it down. It was kind of nice, and Lily and Lana were on their phones for a lot of it, so Sam could research while Dean enjoyed himself just driving along. He could get used to this, actually, because it meant that he would never have to be alone.

“Okay, we’re almost there, so how about you two go and talk to Travis, who found the body, and Lily and I will settle into the motel,” Lana suggested, giving a smile.

Sam nodded at the words from the back seat. “I think that’s a great idea, actually. No need to crowd anyone with four people.”

“Plus, it gives us time to get a cot and claim beds,” Lily pointed out, glad it was day time. “Last time you two had to share a bed and Sam and I never heard the end of it.”

Dean hated being the one to sleep on the cot, but he was a gentleman when it came down to it. Sure, he and Lana had slept together before, but that didn’t mean they just jumped right into sharing a bed. Lily and Sam had that because they’d been dating a couple of years, and it made sense for them to all be in the same room. So, either one of them slept on the couch if there was one, or Lana and Dean sucked it up and slept together when they got to a motel when hardly anyone was awake.

“Motel beds are tiny,” Lana reminded them, shaking her head. “Can’t even have decent sex in them, let alone try to sleep with someone that pulls covers every time he turns over.”

Making a face, Dean turned to her. “You slip your cold feet between my legs and expect me to keep them warm!”

“Because you hog the covers!” Lana replied, giving him a look back.

Lily couldn’t help but continue to laugh as they parked in the parking lot, the girls getting out with the duffels. Sam sent Lily off with a kiss, Dean and Lana sticking their tongues out at each other like the children that they were. Then, while the girls went in to get everything set up, the boys headed out to get a head start on this hunt. That meant that the girls could spend some much needed time together unwinding and talking about things they’d been leaving unsaid.

“Have you had any more feelings since the ‘Hook Man’?” Lana asked Lily slowly.

Lily smiled a little at her as she rummaged through her duffel. “You mean have I gone out of my way to feed off of everyone’s emotions? No.”

None of them were quite sure of how it all worked exactly, but Lily and Sam were connected in so many ways. Not only had they both lost their mothers the same way, but where Sam got visions, Lily was incredibly empathic. It was like a clairvoyant kind of situation, and Lana had thought that it was interesting because ever since dealing with ‘Bloody Mary’, Lily knew that Lana could do things too.

“I just...I wanted to check on you,” Lana admitted, giving her a smile that Lily returned. “Especially since I still have yet to explain to Sam literally anything.”

Lily nodded, taking a deep breath. “Like I said before, you don’t have to tell anyone anything until you’re ready to do it. I get why you told Dean because you two were hunting.”

“Also he saw me,” Lana pointed out, laughing when Lily did. “No, I hear you, I just...I don’t want him to look at me like a freak. He was always the one I knew that I could talk to, you know? Dean is the one that hates talking, but Sam? He always got it.”

“He’d get it more if you told him,” Lily pointed out, nodding when Lana did.

Instead of talking about it anymore, they each claimed a bed and then pulled the chessboard out to play while they waited. When the boys came back, Dean made an annoyed noise and Sam laughed when he saw the two playing. It was one of the many things that the girls had in common, and Lana laughed when Dean started talking.

“You know, this is very not sexy,” Dean told them, shaking his head as both Lily and Lana rolled their eyes at him.

Lana piped up first. “Well, neither of us is trying to impress you.”

Dean made a face at that. “We talked to the locals.”

“Found some beetles and talked to quite a few people. The witness, the developer that hired them--a realtor too. They were having an open house,” Sam explained with a nod.

Lily turned to look at Sam since it was Lana’s turn. “So...why are the beetles significant?”

“Because Sammy here, thinks that they might have eaten the deceased’s brain,” Dean answered for her, shrugging his shoulders. “Weirder things have happened.”

“But I don’t think grosser,” Lana laughed, shaking her head. “Can you imagine having beetles crawl into your ears and eat your brain? That’s incredibly disgusting.”

“That’s a terrible mental picture,” Lily agreed, looking the board over since it was her turn now. “I assume you guys found something, though?”

Sam nodded slowly and sat on the end of the bed with his duffel on it. “I mean, I think so. Seems like a surveyor died too, so people are definitely dying from bug related incidents.”

“Haunting maybe?” Lana asked, looking up at them.

“Maybe,” Dean offered with a shrug. “Or maybe they’re being controlled by someone.”

That was always a possibility when it came to their kind of job: someone could always be pulling invisible strings. It made them wonder, nine times out of ten, if what they were fighting was really what they were fighting, but also the girls still seemed focused on their chess game. Had people not died? Had the boys not brought back ample enough proof of something?

“Really?” Dean asked as he sat on the cot.

Lana glanced at him and smirked. “I’m sorry, are we breaking into house the right now? Would you like us to come get more information for you? It’s getting dark out, and we’re in the middle of a game. I assumed we’d sleep, pick things up tomorrow…”

“Just, dead people seems like the kind of thing we should all be focusing on. Not whether you’re going to capture Munchkin’s Rook with your Knight,” Dean responded, pausing when he said it and Lana gasped at him.

“Oh my God, you know how to play!” Lana exclaimed, pointing her finger at him. “You give us all this crap--”

“--No! No, I don’t know how to play!” Dean protested, heading for the bathroom to get away from her and the looks he was getting.

While he was in there, the other three started to talk about how bugs might be involved here, and then when the chess game ended--stalemate--Lana and Lily set right to looking up things on their phones and laptops while they sat in bed. It honestly wasn’t that they weren’t worried, it was just that they knew the boys had done just about all the research they could at the moment. They were going to need to talk more with the people that were involved with this project that was in development.

“So, what are they building? Do we even know?” Lana asked as she pretended not to watch Dean settle on the cot with the extra blankets.

Sam nodded slowly. “Yeah, more houses. They’re kind of in that market.”

“What are they building on?” Lily asked slowly.

“What do you mean? Land,” Dean replied, chuckling when Lily gave him a look. “I’m sorry, was that too obvious for you?”

“She means if it’s a ghost, did it used to be a cemetery or anything?” Lana asked, laughing a little bit. “I swear, you always think we’re trying to one up you, but we didn’t go with you guys and we just wanted more information.”

They ruled out a cemetery, however, with more research, and then it was late enough that they all just wanted some sleep. They’d talk to Lynda and Larry tomorrow, and perhaps more than that if they figured more out.

\-----

Sam was the first one up the next morning, as he was practically every morning. He didn’t sleep all that much as it was, and Lana was up pretty shortly after Sam had woken up. While he was already at the table in the motel looking through some papers and pulling out the police scanner to go listen in the Impala, Lana headed into the bathroom to change into jogging clothes and then came out and smiled.

“These two would sleep forever if we let them,” she whispered to Sam, grabbing her phone and some head phones. “Call me if you hear anything? I hate jogging, but I want like four donuts this morning, so...”

Laughing softly, Sam nodded. “I understand. I’ll let you know.”

“You want your usual order when I’m back?” Lana asked as they both headed out of the motel room slowly and headed towards the Impala.

“Yeah,” Sam smiled and then they nodded and Lana took off on her run.

It was a running joke now that somehow Lily was blessed with the metabolism she had, because she could snack like Dean and keep her petite figure. Lana on the other hand, hated running, but did it because cardio was the only way she had found that let her keep her figure and still keep up with Dean when it came to drinking. So, since the four were together as a team, when Sam couldn’t sleep, he worked on cases or quietly watched TV, and Lana got up early to jog and then shower, while Lily and Dean got their beauty sleep.

While Lana was jogging, Sam listened to the police scanner, hearing about a death on it after a little while. He texted Lana so she’d be aware, and headed into the motel room to see Lily dressed and Dean heading into the bathroom to take a shower. Smiling at Sam, she smiled a little more when she was greeted with a kiss, and then he sighed.

“Dean is going to need to hurry up. Plus if Lana gets back before--” Sam was saying, but the motel room door opened as if on cue.

Lana closed the door behind her. “I got your text, but still brought coffee. Is...is he in my shower? He is never up this early. Neither are you, actually, Lily.”

Laughing, Lily reached for her coffee. “We heard Sam on the scanner. He thought he was being quiet, but the window was open a little.”

“Oh, so _Sam_ woke you guys up,” Lana laughed, setting the tray down with hers and Dean’s coffee and then moving to the bathroom door to knock. “I need to shower before we go, Dean! How much longer!”

“I just got in!” Dean protested. “If you want to shower so bad you’ll have to join me!”

“Yeah, I pass!” Lana responded, but she was blushing as Lily choked on her coffee.

Once Dean was out, Lana was in and out of the shower really quick, and then everyone was dressed and drinking their coffee as they headed to the place mentioned on the scanner. It was raining out, so they all had their umbrellas out, Larry looking a little surprised to see the girls with them. Apparently Lynda had thought that they were a couple, but Lynda was dead now and it dawned on Lily as she felt the pain around her, that Lynda was the realtor...so this was all connected to what Larry was doing.

“We have to get into that house,” Lily said softly, taking a breath.

Dean nodded slowly. “Way ahead of you. Lana, can I ask a favor?”

“Larry is married, I’m not hitting on him,” Lana responded rather quickly, making Sam and Lily laugh as Dean gave her a look. “What? You were going to ask me to hit on _someone_.”

“Yeah, but like...the cops so we had time to go look at things,” Dean replied, grinning at her.

Lana rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, you’re such a child.”

Smiling more because he’d just won their little face off, Lana moved to go and hit on the cops that were looking over the potential scene, Dean distracted for just a moment before Lily pinched his arm. He yelped, but after a stern look thrown in her direction, followed her and Sam around the back of the house and put Lana flirting with someone to the back of his mind. Right now, he wanted to see where Lynda had died, and when they made it up to the bathroom, Lily leading them up, Sam reached out to steady her as she looked shaken.

Sam knew better than anyone that Lily could empathically feel this stuff, and Dean picked up a towel on the floor and rubber spiders fell out. Dean was now convinced that Larry’s kid who was obsessed with bugs was behind it, only because he had tried to scare Lynda with a tarantula when he and Sam had been at the ‘Open House’ earlier.

“You didn’t want to mention that sooner?” Lily asked Dean as the three of them started to head back out of the house.

Dean shrugged his shoulders. “Sam is taking this a little personally.”

Lily was confused when Dean had said that, jumping a little when Lana jumped out at them out back, Dean shrieking like a little girl as Sam’s immediate response was to shield Lily with his body. Lana was laughing, Dean clutching his chest but also moving toward her, making her squeak and move out of his grasp. Clearly she was getting him back for sending her off to flirt instead of look at the scene of the death, and Lily and Sam were just caught in the crossfire.

“I am faster than you! I jog every morning!” Lana told Dean as he moved at her again. “No! Stop! I’m sorry!”

Laughing a little, Lily shook her head. “And Dean’s the oldest, right?”

That made Sam laugh too, all four of them heading out to get some food before they waited across the street from the school bus. Matt, Larry’s son, got off of it and then headed towards the woods, both boys huffing, but Lily and Lana weren’t quite sure exactly what was up. Perhaps that was what happened when they missed the whole first part of canvassing a case and meeting everyone, but the boys were taking this really seriously.

The way Dean’s eyes crinkled, and the way Sam pursed his lips, made both girls sit silently in the car for a moment before the boys were getting out of it. Matt’s house was the other direction, and so the boys wanted to follow him and see if perhaps this was what he did to get the bugs. After all, all the deaths seemed to be tied to insects in some way, and the girls followed because they didn’t know if they’d need to intervene or not.

“He’s just checking out a grasshopper,” Lana started, but Sam and Dean were already off to the races, so it were.

“Hey, Matt. Remember me?” Sam asked him, giving him a smile.

Matt turned to look at the four of them and nodded. “What are you guys doing out here?”

“We just wanted to talk to you,” Dean told him with a shrug, but his tone was a little menacing.

“You guys aren’t here to buy a house, are you? Wait...are you serial killers?” Matt asked suddenly, and it was Lana intervening now.

“No, we are not serial killers, but if we were, I’d be on some list somewhere of hot ones,” she joked, moving to stand in front of the boys. “Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum want to talk to you guys about the insect problems around here lately, but they’re being a little predatory about it.”

Lily sighed and stepped forward too. “You know that Lynda died?”

“Yeah...wait...you think I had something to do with it?” Matt asked them.

“You do know a lot about insects,” Dean pointed out, moving when he caught Lana’s elbow moving for his rib.

It was clear that there wasn’t much of a united front, but Lily wasn’t feeling bad vibes coming from Matt, and Lana never thought kids were guilty. Sure, this guy was a teenager, but even then, she had a hard time convicting anyone of anything and Lily had a feeling she knew why. They all needed to sit down and talk about things in more depth, but for now they had to deal with what was going on in the here and now in front of their faces.

“I mean, the tarantula thing was a joke yesterday, guys,” Matt explained, shaking his head. “That wouldn’t explain the bee attack or the gas company guy. Something weird is going on though. I give you that. Something’s happening with the insects: let me show you something.”

Lana nodded at him. “Lead the way.”

“So, if you knew about all this bug stuff, why not just tell your dad about it? Maybe he could clear everybody out or something,” Sam started as they followed Matt into the woods farther.

Matt scoffed. “Believe me, I've tried. But, uh, Larry doesn't listen to me.”

“Why not?” Sam asked, all of them a little thrown by Matt calling his father by his name.

“Mostly? He's too disappointed in his freak son,” Matt answered pretty quickly.

Sam scoffed this time. “I hear you.”

It was Dean questioning Sam that made Lily and Lana pause for a moment, suddenly understanding why it was that Sam and Dean were taking this so personally. While Sam saw himself in Matt and in Matt’s situation, Dean was seeing this from a completely differently standpoint. Neither of them were seeing this the clearest, but it was Sam telling Matt that college was only 2 years away and then he’d be free, that had Lily suddenly on edge.

Her abilities here made it hard for her to feel the tension between Sam and Dean, and the feelings coming off of both of them, Lana stepping in. It was clear that Sam and Dean were about to argue, and Lana just wanted to get to the bottom of this bug problem. So, she steered them back to the reason they were in the woods, and a few moments later they reached a large clearing where hundreds of different insects could be heard among the trees.

“I've been keeping track of insect populations. It’s, um, part of an AP science class,” Matt explained, blushing a little.

Lana smiled though. “That’s both cool and gross all at once. So...what do you think is happening to them?”

“I’m not sure exactly, but I mean, bees to earthworms, beetles...honestly? You name it and they’re here. They’re just congregating,” Matt explained, moving to follow Lana and Lily as they continued further until they paused near a mound of hundreds of worms.

“Yeah, see? This is gross,” Lana said, moving when Dean stuck his foot out and some of them fell, creating a hole. “One or two worms, whatever...but no thank you. Are you going to poke them with a stick?”

Dean smiled a little as he picked the stick up, poking at the hole and then pausing when he struck something. It was obvious that something was down there, and when he moved to put his hand down the hole, Lana made a gagging sound and took a couple of steps back. Lily made a face as Sam watched, Dean pulling up a very obvious human skull.

He puts the stick down and puts his hand into the hole. With a disgusted expression, he feels something inside the hole. He brings his hand back up, and the three boys look horrified. Covered in dirt and worms, is a human skull. So, maybe the girls had been onto something when they asked about the land, because after a little more digging, they realized that there were skeletons in an unmarked grave, and that was never a good sign. So, the next step was going to the university in town, the girls letting Sam and Dean take the lead on this one. After all, they were asking a professor about a box of bones.

“Maybe one of us should have gone and left one of them here,” Lily piped up from the back seat as Lana sat in the passenger seat up front. “I mean...they’re emotional.”

Lana nodded slowly. “Yeah, but they need to face this. John and Sam used to fight all the time and I’m sure he’s told you all about it, but John was also really proud. Dean used to tell me how John would drive up to Stanford some weekends just to check on him. I just...think the Winchester men are stubborn. If we don’t let them fight and hash it out, they’ll keep it all to themselves. It’s healthier to just talk, but do you really see that happening?”

“No,” Lily laughed a little, shaking her head. “I wonder if Sam knows John came around.”

“Knowing John like I do, I doubt he ever told him, or ever plans to,” Lana replied, searching through Dean’s cassettes. “We should listen to ‘Queen’ on the way back.”

“You snuck that in his box,” Lily laughed more, smiling at her.

Lana shrugged. “I would never…”

They both knew she would and she did, but they didn’t talk about it when the boys came back out, telling them that there used to be a lot of Native Americans around back in the day. If they wanted to know about any possible legends, they were going to have to talk to someone who would know, so they had to go to Sapulpa. That was where the professor was pointing them, so they drove the sixty miles there, Lana noting the tension and keeping the player on AC/DC because she liked it _and_ because she knew better then to poke Dean right now.

After asking for some directions closer to where they needed to be, they made it to an Oklahoma diner, where a Native American man was playing cards. They’d asked around a bit for him, and with smiles, they asked if they could join him, glad they’d found him: Joe White Tree. It sounded like he had the answers that they were looking for.

“We’re students from the University,” Dean started out.

Joe shook his head. “No, you're not. You’re lying.”

While taken aback, Lana spoke up. “We’re looking into some really bad things that are happening in Oasis Plains.”

“It’s a housing development near the Atoka Valley,” Lily added, smiling at him too.

Joe nodded slowly. “I like them: they’re not liars.”

It was obvious that Dean was annoyed, but it wasn’t the first nor the last time that he and Sam would be out done by the girls. They were just naturally more friendly and soft, and it was nice because it meant that Sam and Dean didn’t have to constantly calm themselves if they didn’t want to. Besides, the girls were feeling like they hadn’t really pulled their fair share of the weight around here.

“We found some old Native American bones there, and we just wanted to know what happened,” Lana continued, taking a breath. “Do you know?”

Joe took a breath too and looked Lana in the eye. “I’ll tell you what my grandfather told me, what his grandfather told him. Two hundred years ago, a band of my ancestors lived in that valley. One day, the American cavalry came to relocate them. They were resistant, the cavalry impatient. As my grandfather put it, on the night the moon and the sun share the sky as equals, the cavalry first raided our village. They murdered, raped. The next day, the cavalry came again, and the next, and the next. And on the sixth night, the cavalry came one last time. And by the time the sun rose, every man, woman, and child still in the village was dead. They say on the sixth night, as the chief of the village lay dying, he whispered to the heavens that no white man would ever tarnish this land again. Nature would rise up and protect the valley. And it would bring as many days of misery and death to the white man as the cavalry had brought upon his people.”

“Insects. Sounds like nature to me. Six days.” Dean nodded, then he shook his head.

“And on the night of the sixth day, none would survive.” Joe finished, looking back at the cards he had in his hand.

The four hunters exchanged looks before thanking Joe for the information, all of them hashing the details out as they headed to the car. Turned out that the first death was on the spring equinox: the night the sun and the moon share the sky as equals. So, it only seemed right to assume that every year about this time, anybody in Oasis Plains was in danger, but they were only really dealing with it now.

“So not a cemetery, but it is cursed land,” Lily pointed out. “Larry built his whole neighborhood on cursed land and the sixth night is tonight. Everyone helping him is dead, and now his whole family is in danger.”

Dean nodded and stepped on the gas. “Well, shit.”

“You don’t just break a curse. We are going to have to outrun it, so who has Larry’s phone number?” Lana asked quickly. “We have to get them out of the house.”

“I’m on it,” Dean promised, calling Larry up and pretending to be Travis calling about a gas leak. Unfortunately, Larry knew Travis’ voice. “Uh…”

Panicked, Dean hung up, Lana giving him a look and then pulling out her phone. While she tried to come up with another plan, Sam beat them all to the punch and called Matt, being truthful with him. Not to the full extent, but he told Matt that it was imperative that he get out of the house as quickly as possible. He had to get his whole family out and get his Dad to listen to him no matter what he did. Dean piped up and told him to fake appendicitis: hey, it was a plan.

When they pulled up to their house, however, the family was still all there and the four hunters hurriedly got out of the car. Larry wanted to call the cops, and now the boys were hurriedly trying to get him to listen, but Matt had already tried to tell his Dad the truth, so Larry thought that they were all crazy. Lana didn’t have time for this though, and she seemed the one out of the four of them that lost her cool the quickest, even if she didn’t seem like it in the moment.

“I know that you’re protecting your family, Larry, but we don’t have time for this. This land is cursed, and the strange insect related deaths have picked off people helping you with your development for days--days in a row. I know you think that’s weird too,” Lana explained before she paused. “Do you hear that? Shit. They’re already here.”

Several bugs came at once at the light, and when they all looked up into the sky, they saw millions of bugs flying toward the house. That was enough to make Larry understand, but now it was too late to get them out of the house. So Larry, his wife, Joanie, and Matt, had to listen to everything that the four hunters were spouting off to them.

Lily was moving around trying to help them with the towels, Dean was looking for potential weapons and found bug spray that he intended to pair with his lighter for a makeshift flamethrower, and Sam was trying to talk them all down. Luckily, it was just them in the neighborhood right now because no one had quite moved in yet, but the phones were dead because the bugs had chewed through the power lines, and no one was getting a cellphone signal.

“They’re blanketing the house,” Lana explained, noting how Sam was staying close to Lily to try to ease her through everyone’s panic. Knowing she was half demon, however, Lana’s mind was somewhere else, and she shook her head as creaking near the fireplace could be heard. “Everyone upstairs!”

They started moving, Dean using the bug spray and his lighter as Lily and Sam ushered the family up the stairs. Then he reached for Lana, who shook her head and started pushing him upstairs too.

“Lana! You get your ass upstairs too!” Dean ordered, panicked for a reason he didn’t really want to get into.

“I’m coming!” she responded, holding her hands out to force the bugs back long enough to get her and Dean up the stairs. “I’ll explain every single thing soon...I promise. Just go!”

Nodding, they hurried up to the attic, aware that the bugs were chewing through the wood. They were going to get to them, it was only a matter of time, but they were determined to outlast them. Lana wasn’t even sure what she could do right now to stop them, other than force them back for a bit, needing to keep the bugs away until after midnight. As long as they could outlast the curse, then no one needed to die.

Continuing to use his makeshift flamethrower, Dean kept the bugs away that way, even as they ate through holes in the roof, and Lana tried her best to as secretly as possible force hordes away with her thoughts. There was a lot to unpack there, but as the sun came up, the bugs flew out the holes they’d come through, and everyone felt like they could breath.

No casualties at this point was always a win.

\-----

Lana stayed in the motel room while Lily and the boys went to say goodbye. She needed to figure out how she was even going to approach this subject, and she looked up when the three came in, Lily telling her that Matt wasn’t interested in bugs anymore. That made Lana smile, but she knew there was an elephant in the room.

“You can do things,” Lily pointed out, seeing that the boys weren’t sure what to say yet. “I get feelings, Sam has nightmares, and you...some kind of energy manipulation thing?”

Dean made a face. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Clearly, we all have a _lot_ to talk about,” Lana nodded before she stood. “However, this place creeps me out, so...next town first?”

“Next town first, but then you talk,” Dean told her, everyone packing up and hitting the road, wanting to put all of these bugs behind them and find John.

That meant a little good old fashioned bonding would come next.


	3. Too Close to Home

There wasn’t a lot of small talk that could help the three escape Dean’s looks shot in their direction. For once, he felt like the odd one out, and the fact that all three of these people he cared about had freaky abilities, was weighing on him. Still, they had a nice car ride, making it to the next motel eventually, and getting a room with two beds and a couch. A couch that Lana wondered if she would be sleeping on, up until Dean tossed his duffel onto it.

Part of it felt like he was trying to mark his territory, and the other part felt like he was making it clear to them that he wanted a little more space from them. They had been keeping things to themselves and he just wanted to be in the know. Not to mention, it wasn’t just Lana and Lily, but it was _his brother_. Sam had _also_ been hiding things from him and Lily had known his secret but he’d never told Dean?

Dean hated this.

“It didn’t start all that long ago,” Lily said first, noting the way Dean was looking at them as she staked her claim on the bed that was closest to the bathroom.

Sam took a deep breath. “I started having nightmares, that I realized were visions…”

“I knew just meeting Sam that we were connected,” Lily explained, shrugging a bit herself. “It wasn’t until a hunt happened on campus that we talked about it. It was so much more than just monsters being real. We realized our mothers had died the same way, and we realized we had the Yellow-Eyed demon in common. Realized that we both could do things that no ‘normal’ person was supposed to do.”

Lana squirmed a little bit as they spoke, realizing that it wasn’t like what she could do at all. It wasn’t who she was at all, but when Sam and Lily kept talking about Azazel and everything he’d done to them, Lana couldn’t find it in her to be truly forthcoming with them. What happened if she told them the truth and they pulled a gun on her? What happened if she told them and they suddenly made her leave?

Perhaps she was a danger to them, but she knew that for right now, this secret had to stay buried and she had to find a way to fit this narrative. Sounded like Sam and Lily had both noticed their powers about the same time, so Lana made a lie up quick. After all, they all lied for a living, so since it was still early-ish, she had a good feeling she could make this as convincing as she could.

“Same here only, I don’t have visions or clairvoyance/empathic abilities,” Lana explained, deciding she knew what to say and what to omit in the moment. “I can move things...people. I found out by accident when I was mad and on a hunt. I pinned a demon up against a wall and he was really confused--but not as confused as me. He started going off about how the ‘plan’ must be real, but I was so scared that I exorcised him.”

If she got too into this explanation, she would start poking holes into her own story, and right now she needed to keep this to herself. Until she knew better what being half demon meant--what being Azazel’s biological daughter meant--she just couldn’t let them in. They were becoming very dear to her, and she couldn’t handle it if they turned on her. So for now, she’d keep being able to somewhat sense demons to herself, and sending them to Hell with her thoughts to herself, and just embrace being some psychic that had some telekinesis.

She could work with that.

Besides, Dean was mad enough that they’d all been keeping just this from him, and he sat on the couch as he nodded at them all. So, he was traveling with three psychics, and while he didn’t understand it, he definitely wasn’t going to turn on them. It meant that things from here on out would be different, and maybe he should talk to his father, but did he know? Would Florence have told him? Did _she_ know?

“What has your mother said about it?” Dean asked suddenly, making eye contact with Lana for the first time since they had all started sharing.

Lana nodded at him. “Of course she does. Annie and Mom were the first people that I told. Lily and Sam had each other but me? I mean it when I say I freaked out. I was hyperventilating, especially because I don’t know what this ‘plan’ is. If there are more of us though...then it probably isn’t even just the three of us.”

It was _that_ that made Dean make a face next, because he hadn’t even thought about that. He had been too worried, honestly, about other hunters finding out and hurting his family. Now, he was worried about if there might be others out there that might be...well _dangerous_. Just because he trusted these three to have his back, didn’t mean that he could trust others. What if someone unstable had these gifts?

He wanted to sleep on it, and the other three agreed, Lily and Sam taking the bed closest to the bathroom, Dean taking the couch, and Lana taking the other bed. She felt bad about that, like she didn’t deserve to sleep there, but Dean didn’t want to talk about all of this anymore. So, he had laid there for a little while just ignoring them, everyone falling asleep feeling a little out of sorts. They didn’t want Dean to be mad at them, but they couldn’t really blame him for being upset either, and knew they had to let him feel his feelings.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, Sam woke everyone up with a nightmare. He said it was the family in their old house, and Lily rubbed his shoulders as he rubbed his temples. Lana seemed uneasy, but no one in this room knew it was because Sam was worried that Azazel was there. That he was going to kill this woman.If her father was going to be there, then would he talk to her? Talk to them? Would they find out what she was trying to keep from them?

“We have to go,” Lily announced with a nod, kissing Sam’s temple and then giving his shoulders one last squeeze before she got off of the bed. “We have to save these people.”

“I don’t know,” Dean said slowly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Sam looked at him thoughtfully. “What do you mean you don’t know, Dean? This woman might be in danger. I mean, this might even be the thing that killed Mom and burnt mine and Lily’s place to the ground! We can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

“All right, just slow down, would ya?” Dean asked, standing up and then pacing the room a bit. “I mean, first you tell me that you’ve got the Shining? And then you tell me that I’ve gotta go back home? Especially when…”

“When what?” Lana asked him slowly, watching his movements closely.

“When I swore to myself that I would never go back there?” Dean remarked, the sadness in his voice hitting all of them, Lily especially.

She had grown so accustomed to Sam and Dean that she could feel what they were feeling pretty easily. Sadness had washed over Dean as he thought about going to the place where his mother had died and this had all started for him, and Lily reached out to take his hand. For her, Dean was like her brother just as much as she was like his sister, and she needed him to know that secrets or not, she was there for him.

“Sam and I can go on our own if you need it,” Lily offered, nodding when Dean shook his head. “It’s just a suggestion.”

Dean didn’t want them to go on their own, so instead they all got dressed and ready to go, the car pretty silent once more on their way back to Kansas. This was kind of hard to stomach, but Dean knew that he had three people that had his back and that helped. Even though they’d been keeping things from him, they were trying to let him know that they wouldn’t leave him. It was even more helpful when Sam and Lana took over when they got there, and Sam admitted he and Dean used to live in this house and they were just passing through.

“They really wanted to see if they could see it again, but it was like pulling out teeth to get them to knock on your door,” Lana smiled, nodding when Jenny did. “Would it be okay?”

“Winchester…” Jenny said thoughtfully. “I actually just found a box of your old things in the attic. Come on in.”

They smiled and thanked her as they walked in, the boys feeling assaulted with memories of the place, Lily feeling their feelings. Lana was taking the place in, trying to get a better picture of the boys before her, and then she heard a little boy asking for juice. It made her smile that there was a family in this house again, but she could feel a darkness. There was something here that she needed to focus on, but what? It didn’t feel demonic, and she nodded when Lily was watching her, knowing that Lily was feeling this too.

“That’s Ritchie,” Jenny announced as they saw the little boy in the play pen. “He’s kind of a juice junkie.” She took the sippy cup out of the fridge then and went to hand it to him. “But, hey, at least he won’t get scurvy.” Moving to her daughter at the table, she motioned to everyone. “Sari, honey, this is Sam and Dean. They used to live here.”

“Hi,” Sair told them with a smile. “And you two?”

Lana stepped in then. “Good friends. We were passing through the neighborhood and just wanted to stop by and see it all. So...I see boxes still. Did you just move in?”

“Yeah, we’re from Wichita,” Jenny explained, shrugging a little. “We, uh...needed a fresh start, that’s all. So, new town, new job--I mean, as soon as I find one. New house.”

They understood the need for something new, but Lana did wonder briefly what would drive them to move here. Sounded like they didn’t have any family close to the area, and while she wanted to ask about Sari and Ritchie’s father, she kept the question to herself. It wasn’t any of her business to ask the woman something so personal, especially when she didn’t seem to really want to talk about it.

“How are you liking the house so far?” Lily ended up asking her.

Jenny took a breath. “Well, all due respect to your childhood home--I mean, I’m sure you had lots of happy memories here--but this place has its issues.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked quickly.

The four hunters were all curious, and as Jenny explained about the flickering lights and the backed up sink, and the rats in the basement, she stopped. Jenny didn’t want them all to think that she was just complaining, but the four waved it off. They didn’t mind hearing about all of it, especially because it would help them to better know what was going on around here.

“Have you seen the rats or have you just heard scratching?” Dean asked slowly.

Jenny made a face but then answered, “It’s just the scratching, actually.”

“Mom?” Sari asked, looking her mother in the eye when Jenny knelt down to talk to her. “Ask them if it was here when they lived here.”

“If what was here, Sari?” Lana asked her, a motherly tone in her voice.

“The thing in my closet,” Sari answered promptly.

“Oh, no, baby, there was nothing in their closets,” Jenny told her, turning to look at Sam and Dean. “Right?”

Sam shook his head. “Right. No, no, of course not.”

Sari was clearly scared of whatever was in her closet, and when Sari insisted it was real and it was a figure on fire, all four of the hunters were surprised. They had to hide it though, and as they went back to the Impala, it was eating at all of them. Jenny was definitely the one from Sam’s dream, and Lily could say for certain that she felt like there was something dangerous in that house.

“Scratching, flickering lights: both are signs of a malevolent spirit,” Lana agreed, looking at Sam. “So definitely visions. Thing is, she said the figure was on fire, but what killed your mother wasn’t a spirit. It was a demon.”

Dean took a breath. “I mean...that part is true.”

Plus, Lana simply didn’t feel her father’s presence, however she did feel _something_ , and she knew it was connected somehow. Maybe it was demonic, and she just wasn’t good at these half demon senses yet. All she knew was that they were going to have to figure this out and soon, because none of them wanted anything bad to happen to Jenny and her kids.

“How much do you actually remember?” Sam asked his brother as they all thought about the case, heading to the gas station to put gas in the Impala.

Dean turned to him as he got out to put gas in the car. “About that night, you mean?”

The girls were listening even though they stayed in the car, both of them in the backseat trying to do a little research. There were things they wanted to discuss, but they weren’t sure how much of it that they should say in front of the boys. Not because they wanted to keep secrets, but because this case was so emotional for the two of them, and it was affecting all of them.

“About that night, you mean?” Dean asked, nodding when Sam nodded too. “Not a whole lot, to be honest with you. I remember the fire…the heat...and then I carried you out the front door.”

Sam looked caught off guard by that. “You did?”

“Yeah...you never knew that?” Dean asked him, nodding when Sam shook his head. “And, well, you know Dad’s story as well as I do. Mom was...she was on the ceiling, and whatever put her there was long gone by the time Dad found her.”

“And he never had a theory about what did it?” Sam asked, upset when Dean told him that John kept that stuff to himself.

“God knows we asked him enough times,” Dean added with the shake of his head.

Lana opened up her door and got out of the car. “If it was a demon, wouldn’t it leave more than the traces of a malevolent spirit behind?”

“Either way, we have to figure it out,” Sam told her. “We have to save those people.”

They were all in agreement, Dean silent until he told them that he had to go to the bathroom. Sam didn’t think much of it, just nodded and then got into the backseat with Lily, Lana glad she would get shotgun, but something was up with Dean. She went to go see if he was alright, Dean having called his father and gotten his voicemail.

“Dad? I know I’ve left you messages before. I don’t even know if you’ll get ‘em,” Dean cleared his throat, “but I’m with Sam, and we’re in Lawrence. And there’s somethin’ in our old house. I don’t know if it’s the thing that killed Mom or not, but…” Lana came up behind him as she heard his voice crack, only hearing the next little bit. “I don’t know what to do,” Dean admitted, tears coming to his eyes. “So, whatever you’re doin’, if you could get here. Please. I need your help, Dad.”

Lana knew she wasn’t supposed to be here, especially when Dean hung up the phone and turned around, catching her there. He was having an emotional moment and he wiped his eyes, trying to throw his guard up with her. Dean didn’t know how much of that she had heard, but he let her come up to him and cup his face, her thumbs wiping off the remainder of the tears. Being vulnerable with her was hard, but she was his friend and she had always been there, even during hard moments, and his gut was telling him that he could trust her.

“Can’t have that,” Lana told him, both of them knowing she was letting him pretend this wasn’t a thing, and he was grateful. “If he doesn’t answer, I can call my Mom.”

Dean nodded, clearing his throat. “I thought I said I had to pee.”

“The look in your eyes said something different. You and I have always known, Dean...even when we were kids.” Lana pointed out with a shrug. “It’s our little secret.”

That made Dean smile a little, and after they both took another deep breath, they returned to the Impala and got in. Dean took them to the motel, the girls staying back while the boys went to go and talk to the guy at the garage that John used to work at. This was really close to the vest for all of them, but mostly for the boys. They thought they might be close to what had killed their mother, and now the girls got to talk about things.

“What were your feelings telling you?” Lana asked Lily as she handed her some coffee from the cafe down the street.

Lily took a breath and sat on the couch. “Well, a lot of things? Jenny and Sair were pretty scared, and the house itself? Something evil is there, but also something...protective? I don’t really know how to describe it.”

“You think maybe there’s two spirits? Or a spell or something?” Lana asked, sipping her coffee too. “I mean, maybe someone tried a protective spell, but Jenny didn’t seem the type.”

“Whatever Sari felt was very real, and very in that house,” Lily explained, shaking her head. “I could feel that something evil was there. We can’t just leave them in that house, but how do we get them to leave? What do we say?”

Lana nodded, shaking her head with a little half smile and a scoff. “We definitely don’t say the truth. No one would believe us.”

“Sari might,” Lily responded, both girls smiling a little.

It was then that Lily’s cell phone rang, and she picked it up because it was Sam calling to let her know what they had found out at the garage. Apparently, John had flipped a switch when Mary died, and started talking about how Mary was murdered and no one believed him...no one but Florence, but that wasn’t part of the story. He had gone to a psychic to learn about what had happened in the house, and the boys wanted to see her: the girls did too.

They packed up quickly and headed to the meeting spot, all four of them waiting on the couch as Missouri dealt with her current client. Lana was flipping through a magazine while Lily was on her phone, everyone turning their attention to Missouri as she came out of her office space, a man walking past them with her.

“All right, there. Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing. Your wife is crazy about you,” Missouri was telling him, the man thanking her before she closed the door behind him and turned to the other four. “Whew. Poor bastard. His woman is cold-bangin’ the gardener.”

Lana laughed a little. “And you didn’t tell him?”

“People don’t come here for the truth. They come for good news,” she responded, looking all four of them over. “Well? Sam, Dean, Lana and Lily...come on already, I ain’t got all day.” Missouri headed to her office, the four following her. The girls were especially confused because they didn’t realize she knew them, and Lily was feeling a lot of things. They followed her, however, and smiled when Missouri continued. “Well, lemme look at ya,” she laughed, smiling at them. “Oh, you boys grew up handsome,” she told them, pointing at Dean, “and you were one goofy-lookin’ kid, too.” Dean glared at her while Sam and Lana smirked, Lily smiling a little as she tried to center herself during this interaction. “Lily...my dear, you are feeling a lot right now. I’m sorry about your family,” she told her, looking at Lana. “My dear, you can’t hold this all in. Florence did and look what happened. You have to let someone in or you’re going to lose this battle with yourself, Lana.” Missouri settled into her chair as Lana swallowed, not wanting to talk about this right now. “So, your father...he’s missin’, boys?”

This was not the interaction that they had all been expecting, but it was obvious that this woman knew things. Whatever she had said to John, and however she knew Florence, she was definitely the real deal kind of psychic. Even though that meant that they were now on the right track, she couldn’t tell them where John was exactly and Dean got a little testy with her, Lana reaching over to rest her hand on Dean’s to calm him down.

“Boy, you see me sawin’ some bony tramp in half? You think I’m a magician? I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in a room, but I can’t just pull facts out of thin air,” she explained, looking at Dean as he settled back. “Boy, you put your foot on my coffee table, I’m ‘a whack you with a spoon!”

Dean made a face at her. “I didn’t do anything…”

“But you were thinkin’ about it,” Missouri responded as the other three smiled.

They were here to ask about John, Sam speaking up to ask her what exactly it was that she had done. Apparently, John had come to see her with Florence, asking about the fire that had killed Mary and wanting to know more about it. Florence had been pretty tight lipped, but John thought that Missouri could sense the echoes, maybe. Point him in the right direction so he could avenge his wife, and so Florence could avenge her friend.

“So...do you know what was in the house?” Lily asked her slowly.

Missouri shook her head. “I don’t know. Oh, but it was evil.”

“That’s what I felt too. The moment I stepped in, I could feel this heavy weight in the air--I was afraid to touch anything,” Lily admitted, nodding when Missouri did.

“Well, Child, you should have been. All that malevolent energy didn’t need to be passing through you anyway,” Missouri explained, shaking her head. “You four are sure something is back inside that house?”

“We’re positive,” Lana spoke up, cautiously but she knew it had to be said. “You look like that surprises you somehow.”

Missouri nodded slowly. “I haven’t been back inside, but I’ve been keepin’ an eye on the place because of what happened to your mother, and it’s been quiet. If anything was to happen, I knew I had to call Florence or John but...no sudden deaths, no freak accidents. Why is it actin’ up now?”

“I don’t know, but Dad going missing, Yellow-Eyes attacking Lily, and now this house all happening at once? It just feels like something’s starting,” Sam explained to them.

That was not a very comforting thought at all, and they all agreed that they were going to have to go back into the house. They were also going to have to get Jenny and her kids out of it, but Missouri paused when Lana was the last to leave the room, and instead turned around while the other three went to the Impala. She had a lot of questions to ask and Missouri knew that she did, nodding at her and answering without Lana saying a word.

“I knew,” Missouri admitted, reaching out to touch her hand. “Your mother was scared when she first brought you here. You weren’t more than a month old, and she asked me all sorts of things. Asked me how it was possible--if you were okay.”

Lana nodded, feeling her eyes get misty. “Am I okay?”

“Child, you’re not this evil creature you think you might be,” Missouri told her, cupping her face and shaking her head. “Lily can feel all of this too. Why do you think she trusts you? You grew up with a good head on your shoulders and now you’ve got to stop hating yourself.”

Taking the Kleenex that Missouri offered her, Lana composed herself before they joined the other three at the car, heading over to Jenny’s house. When they got there, Jenny seemed upset and Lana was the first to dive right in. That made Missouri smile a little, Lily watching as she saw once again firsthand, how quickly Lana started mothering.

“Jenny, are you alright? You look frazzled,” Lana told her.

Jenny took a deep breath. “This just really isn’t a good time.”

“Because there is something in your house and it wants to hurt your family, right?” Lana asked, nodding when Jenny looked confused. “Look, we can help. If you can just let us in, we can fix what’s wrong with the house.”

Even though she wasn’t so sure if she did believe that, too much that she couldn’t explain had been happening. She let them in, Missouri and Lily heading up to Sari’s bedroom, Lily wanting to learn from Missouri a bit. Sure, they didn’t have the exact same powers, nor did it work the same way, but she still had this empathic thing down pat and Lily wanted that. She was tired of the things that happened to her when she touched things and felt all the emotions ten fold.

“This room is the center of it all,” Missouri nodded, looking around.

Lily took a breath. “It feels the darkest here.”

“This was Sam’s nursery,” Missouri explained, looking at Lily when Lily’s breath hitched.

Mary had died right here in this room, burning up on the ceiling like Lily’s mother had when she was six months old. She couldn’t even imagine what that was like to see as a baby, and the same thing had happened to her. Lily felt tears come to her eyes, smiling a little when Missouri took her by the hand and led her out into the hallway with the boys, Lana at the top of the stairs but keeping her distance.

Lana had heard that this was where Mary had died, and she was feeling this crushing weight in her chest. Her father had started all of this 22 years ago and she couldn’t help but feel like it was her fault even though she knew logically that it wasn’t. She wiped the tears from her eyes when Missouri explained that this was not what had killed their mother, and that there was more than one spirit, just like what Lily had thought earlier.

That was good at least.

“Why are they here?” Dean asked her.

Missouri took a breath. “They’re here because of what happened to your family. You see, all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaves wounds. And sometimes, wounds get infected.”

“It makes this place a magnet for paranormal energy,” Lana spoke up, everyone looking at her. “My mother told me that when something truly dark leaves its mark, other lesser evils become attracted to the same location over time. In this case, a poltergeist that clearly doesn’t want to stop until Jenny and her children are dead.”

“But you said there was more than one spirit…” Sam started slowly.

“There is,” Missouri answered him. “I just can’t quite make out the second one.”

Dean took a breath. “Well we know one thing for sure: no one is dying in this house ever again. So, we have to stop this.”

\-----

Even though Lana was a little worried about destroying the house by putting holes in the drywall to put in mixtures that Missouri had made to purify the house, at least it was working. They got Jenny and the kids out of the house and promised her that they would take care of all of this, Dean finding Lana in the kitchen. He knew that something was up with her this time, and just like he had hated being caught with tears in his eyes when he called his father, she hated that she knew he was here because of the tears in _her_ eyes earlier when they were in the hallway discussing the spirits.

“You seem pretty attached to this too,” Dean told her, taking a breath.

Lana nodded and avoided eye contact. “I just get emotional about hunts.”

She was avoiding the subject, but they heard Missouri scream, about to move toward her when knives started to fly in the kitchen. Lily and Sam couldn’t get to her either, because an unplugged cord had come up and wrapped itself around Sam’s neck, and he was on the floor, Lily trying to get it to stop suffocating him. In a moment of action over thought, Lana moved the table up to shield her and Dean from the knives hurling at them, Dean just letting it happen.

In this moment, her having these telekinetic powers helped him out, and he realized what an asset that could be. For Lana, she knew she could do more here, but she didn’t want to even start down that road, and when the knives ran out, she dropped the table and she and Dean bolted from the kitchen. Lily was crying out now, needing help because Sam was being strangled, and Lana and Dean hurried to the room that she was calling from, her fingers trying to pluck the cord off so Sam could breathe, but his body was going slack.

“You can’t die on me, Sam Winchester!” Lily exclaimed, looking up when Dean kicked a hole in the wall and Lana dropped the bag of purifying herbs inside.

A blinding white light left the room, Lily wrapping her arms around Sam as he gasped for air. There were tears in her eyes, and she was feeling all of the emotions as Sam tried to hug her back, but he was weak. Lana’s hand came up to rest on Dean’s back, and he nodded as he glanced at her, then the two left Lily and Sam to check on Missouri. The woman came down the hallway toward them, and then all five of them headed down to the messy kitchen.

“You sure this is over?” Sam asked Missouri slowly.

Missouri nodded at him. “I’m sure. Why? Why do you ask?”

“Nevermind,” he sighed, shaking his head. “It’s nothin’, I guess.”

They heard a car pull up and the door open, everyone turning to see Jenny entering the house. She had come back to see if things had been taken care of, and her house was an absolute mess. Sam promised they’d pay for all of it, and Missouri said the boys would clean it all up, chastising Dean for cursing at her in his head, which only made the girls laugh a little.

When the clean up was done, they headed out to the car, but Sam didn’t think it was over yet. Lily had a sneaking suspicion too, but she wasn’t feeling what she had felt before: not at the same level. However, she and Sam trusted their feelings and Dean and Lana trusted them too, so they camped out in the Impala. They wanted to make sure that everything really was finished, and it turned out Sam was right: as he looked over the house again, Sam saw Jenny beating on her bedroom window to try to get their attention, just like in his vision.

“Let’s go,” Sam told them, getting out of the car first.

The other three followed behind him, getting in and jumping right into action. Dean and Lily went for Jenny, Lana and Sam heading for the kids. When Lana got into Sari’s room, she saw the burning figure in her closet, reaching for her. Sari hurried to her, Sam getting Ritchie, and Lily and Dean had to kick Jenny’s bedroom door in to get her out of her room.

“Don’t look, Sweetie! Don’t look,” Lana told her, picking her up and rushing her towards the door, meeting up with Sam.

“Alright, Sari, take your brother outside as fast as you can, and don’t look back,” Sam told her, and suddenly an invisible force threw Sam onto the ground after he handed Ritchie to his sister.

Sari screamed and hurried outside with her brother, Lana calling out Sam’s name and suddenly being very alert. When she got there with her brother, Dean, Lily and Jenny were already out on the lawn, and not seeing the other two put fear in their eyes. They wouldn’t be able to forgive themselves if something happened to them.

“Sari, where are Lana and Sam?” Dean asked her.

“They’re inside,” Sari cried, shaking her head. “Something got him and she went to save him.”

Dean looked up at the front door as Lily started for the house, but the front door slammed shut and when Lily touched the door knob, dark energy coursed right into her, making her cry out as her hand felt like it was on fire. She had to let go of the door knob, Dean opening up the trunk, grabbing an ax to chop at the door to get it open.

Lily held her throbbing hand, staying out of Dean’s way as he chopped at the door, Lana and Sam being pinned to the wall inside of the kitchen. This was most definitely a poltergeist, and for a moment, Lana wished that she had the powers to stop this. Of course, perhaps being half demon didn’t mean she could do a damn thing against ghosts, but she had to try didn’t she? All she knew was that the fire figure was here, and she couldn’t save Sam or herself.

“Sam!” Lily cried out, seeing the figure.

“Lana! We’re almost through!” Dean told her, making a hole big enough for him and Lily to get through as the fire figure made its way toward Sam and Lana.

Lana paused however as she looked the figure over. “Sam…”

“I see it,” Sam told her, Dean and Lily coming in with the rock salt gun. “No, don’t! DON’T!”

“Sam!” Lily protested, as confused as Dean was.

“No, I know who it is, Lily. I can see her now,” Sam explained, and the fire vanished.

Standing in front of them was Mary Winchester, looking exactly as she had the night that she had been pinned and burned to the ceiling of this house. Dean’s whole demeanor softened, Lily and Lana knowing who it was when Dean spoke in that soft, broken tone he took when he was feeling the kind of broken he hated to be in front of people.

“Mom?” Dean asked her.

She smiled and stepped closer to him. “Dean...Lily…” she turned from them and moved closer to Sam and Lana who had tears in their eyes for different reasons. “Lana...Sam,” Mary greeted, her eyes on Sam as her smile faded. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Sam asked her, genuinely confused now too.

Mary just looked at him sadly, saying nothing and walking away from them to the middle of the kitchen and looking up at the ceiling. “You get out of my house. And let go of my son.” Once again she burst into flames, and as the fire reached the ceiling, she disappeared in a burst, Sam and Lana released from the hold on the wall.

It was hard to voice anything for a moment, all of them looking at where Mary had disappeared, and then at each other. Sam was certain that it was all over now, so they left, letting Jenny know it was over for real, and then heading back to the motel. Lana was still wiping tears away when they pulled into the parking lot, Lily and Sam going into the room to sleep, Dean turning to look at Lana in the back seat as she sat there.

“Hey…” he told her gently.

She smiled sadly and then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be this emotional when it was _your Mom_ , but I just…”

Lana blamed herself because it had been _her_ biological father that had taken Mary from Sam and Dean and John in the first place. Taken her from Florence. Losing your best friend wasn’t the same as losing your wife or your mother, but Lana felt responsible. If her father hadn’t been so Hell bent on whatever his plan was, perhaps Mary would still be alive and the boys would be happy. What if they had never had to hunt? How could she travel with them knowing that it was her family that had hurt theirs? Even if she didn’t think of Azazel as her family, it was his blood that flowed through her veins.

“I know she was important to your Mom too,” Dean admitted, shaking his head. “I know Dad used to tell stories, and I know your mother blamed herself for all of this. I know you didn’t know my mother, but just like Lily, you feel things or everyone.”

Lana shook her head. “Not like Lily--she feels so much. You think her hand is okay?”

“We both know that Sam is icing it as we speak,” Dean responded, reaching back to wipe her tears away. “Now, we tell them nothing of this.”

“Our little secret,” Lana agreed, both of them smiling before they got out of the car and threw on brave faces.

\-----

The next morning, the four went back to see Jenny and the kids, Missouri coming too to make sure she felt not a single thing in this house. Jenny gave Dean and Sam the box of their things too, and Lily and Lana said ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ to the kids. Sari seemed pretty happy knowing that everything was over now, and Missouri was talking to Sam about it all. She didn’t feel Mary here any more, and Sam had tears in his eyes thinking about it.

“Why would Mom destroy herself like that? To cancel the poltergeist out?” Sam asked Missouri, smiling a little at Lily when she came over to him and took his hand in hers, their fingers interlacing.

Missouri smiled at them. “Well, to protect her boys, of course.” Sam nodded and Missouri took a deep breath. “You two, I’m sorry. You sensed it was still here, didn’t you? Even when I couldn’t.”

“What’s happening to us?” Lily asked her.

“I know I should have all the answers, but I don’t know. I don’t even know if Florence has the answers,” she admitted, looking for the couple to Dean and Lana looking over pictures at the Impala. “She knows more than she’s told any of us, but the only person who can get her to talk is going to be Lana.”

Lily swallowed, looking at Missouri. “Do you feel it too?”

“Feel what?” Sam asked suddenly, looking between Lily and Missouri.

He didn’t like that Lily wasn’t making eye contact with him, or that it seemed like Lily and Missouri knew something else that they shouldn’t. Or at least something that they wouldn’t share with the rest of them. While he had visions, Lily had feelings about people, and she was able to tap into it through touching them or their belongings. Much like Missouri, but on a whole other level, so if they knew something, Sam wanted to be in the loop.

“She’s powerful,” Missouri answered Lily with a nod, her eyes on Lily’s. “Just remember that that doesn’t make her bad.”

“No, no,” Lily said quickly. “I don’t sense evil, I just sense...power. Not just any power, but a familiar one. I don’t understand it, honestly.”

Missouri nodded at her. “It probably isn’t time for you to understand it then.”

Lily seemed okay with that answer, but Sam was suddenly wondering about his childhood friend and about what she and her mother might know. He was taken from his thoughts by Dean asking if he was ready to go, and then Lily and Missouri shared a hug before they all exchanged ‘goodbyes’. Dean wanted to put Lawrence in his rearview mirror, and honestly? So did Lana. Lily and Sam just wanted to get to somewhere new, and so they all piled into the car while Missouri headed back to her office.

“That boy of yours has some powerful abilities, and so does his girlfriend,” Missouri mused out loud, walking into her office and shaking her head at John Winchester. “How they didn’t sense you, I have no idea, but it must have been Lana.”

John fiddled with his wedding ring. “She’s powerful. I’ve known that for a while now. If she’s with them too, then she’s putting them out of whack. I...do you really think Mary’s spirit saved the boys?”

It was clear that he had come when Dean had called, but he hadn’t shown himself for about a million different reasons. He was going to have to talk to Bobby and Florence, but right now he was mourning his wife and he was being chastised by Missouri. John deserved it, he knew he did, but there was something big in play and he couldn’t go to them right now.

“Why won’t you go talk to your children?” Missouri asked him.

With tears in his eyes, John looked up at her. “I want to. You have no idea how much I wanna see ‘em. But I can’t. Not yet. Not until I know the whole truth.”


	4. Hidden Truths

Bobby Singer wiped the sleep from his tired eyes as his ears were assaulted with a terribly loud ringtone from his phone. He groaned, reaching for the phone as the naked woman under the covers next to him groaned too. It was in that moment as he saw that John was calling, that he remembered the night before, and he chuckled a little.

“Flor?” he asked her, chuckling when she shook her head. “John’s calling.”

Florence turned to look at him, holding the sheet to herself. “Then you should answer, and I should probably shower…”

“Probably,” Bobby responded, returning her kiss and then answering his phone as he watched Florence get up and head into the bathroom. “What do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?”

“I need to see you and Flor,” John explained, shaking his head. “She’s not answering her phone though. Do you know where she is?”

This thing with Florence wasn’t new, but it was also an on and off thing that they hadn’t talked to anyone about yet. She’d had a thing for him way back when Mary and John were living the normal life, and he’d liked her too. Then they’d had a fight, she’d had the fling that resulted in Lana, and things with them were complicated after that. Not to mention she couldn’t be around for awhile, and then she’d met Alan, and he’d met Karen.

Then Florence had another kid, Bobby ended up having to kill his wife when she was possessed by a demon, Florence and Bobby hardly spoke, Florence had to take the girls away when Lana was five, and other than the occasional call and texts and hunt, Florence and Bobby weren’t sure what this was. Was it a rekindled romance? Was it going to go anywhere? Florence seemed more distant from it than Bobby, but it was because Bobby still didn’t know about Lana.

No one did.

Florence knew that if this was really going to be something, then she needed to come clean, but she just didn’t know _how_. Bobby didn’t know what to say either, because the three of them had a lot of history, and what would John think? What would Lana think if she knew that Bobby and her mother were sometimes sleeping together? Not to mention, Annie didn’t know either, and it was just easier to lie.

“I know where she is. If she isn’t answering, she’s probably busy. I’ll try her too and see you when you swing by. How far are you?” Bobby asked him.

John took a deep breath. “A few hours? I just need to talk things through.”

That sounded kind of ominous, but Bobby agreed and then went to join Florence in the shower, both of them spending a little time flirting and then the rest of the time bathing. Once they were done, they got dressed and then Florence went to make her and the boys some coffee, looking at her phone and texting her daughter back. Things with Sam, Dean and Lily seemed to be going well for her, but she also seemed a little emotional about the last hunt.

Lana had called her mother afterwards and they’d talked at length about what had happened, so Florence was pretty sure that that was what John wanted to talk about. The spirit of his dead wife had saved Lana, Lily and the Winchester boys, and Florence knew so much more about Mary than she ever let on. There was a lot of past between them all, and she wondered if she should just tell him about Mary...maybe tell him about Lana.

The problem with that, was that Florence didn’t want John to get it in his head that his fight with Azazel, was his fight with _Lana_. She was innocent in all of this, no matter whose blood ran through her veins, and Florence wanted Bobby and John to understand that. Perhaps John also knew a little more about all of this than he was letting on, but she wouldn’t know unless she talked to him, and she smiled when Bobby came up behind her and pressed a kiss to her neck before grabbing his cup of coffee.

“You’re lost in thought,” Bobby told her, pulling back and looking at her. “I’ve seen that face many times and it means it has something to do with your daughters.”

Florence nodded, taking a deep breath before speaking up. “It has everything to do with my girls, but also to do with me...and _Mary_.”

Whenever Florence brought up Mary, there were usually tears, and Bobby understood that better than anyone except John. He and John knew that Mary and Florence had grown up together, but they hadn’t known that Mary was a hunter. Mary had left her whole past behind her when Azazel had killed her parents and made a deal with her, and Florence _still_ felt the pain of not having Mary around too.

“Whatever John has to say, must be very important,” Bobby nodded, smiling at Florence and then going to their usual distance so John wouldn’t be suspicious when he got there.

\-----

“I still don’t get why you and I had to leave them behind,” Dean told Lana as they entered the bar, sitting there together. “The four of us should have come.”

Lana laughed, shaking her head as they took their jackets off and set them on the stools on the outside of them. “You are incredibly clueless, you know that?”

“I am not,” Dean replied with a look of indignance, but then he frowned. “What did I miss?”

“You and I came out to this bar just the two of us, so the other two could have sex,” Lana pointed out, giving him a nod when it clicked and he made a face. “Are you kidding me? It is just sex. I mean...it’s never _just_ sex, but the point is they’ve been dating for like three years? Of course they’re banging, and we’re the third and fourth wheel.”

Dean nodded and then shrugged his shoulders. “I just don’t like thinking about it. Glad Sam’s getting some but like...he’s my brother and Lily’s like my sister. Just no.”

Lana laughed a little, giving the bartender her attention when he came and stood in front of them. Dean ordered a beer and Lana ordered a whiskey sour, both of them looking around the bar like they were looking for something. The bartender caught Lana’s eye again and winked at her, Lana giving him a smile until she heard Dean scoff softly next to her, making her look at him and laugh a little.

“I’m sorry, are you trying to _cockblock_ me?” Lana asked him.

Dean held his hands up in surrender. “Our room is ocupado with someone else’s sexcapades.”

“Well...okay, you’re not wrong,” Lana replied, and then shrugged. “Three years just them and their peers and now they’re stuck with us.”

“Could be worse,” Dean pointed out, both of them agreeing as the bartender brought their drinks back and slid Lana his number before moving farther down the bar. “You can do better than that, you know?”

Lana liked this bit of jealousy and nodded. “Oh I have done better than him. About yay high with these perfect green eyes…”

She was talking about him and the last time they’d been a hunt together, Dean blushing a little and smirking into his beer. Even with all of this traveling together right now, they hadn’t really talked about the hook up. It had been a spur of the moment thing, that had descended into nuzzling and a few hours of just lying amongst tangled sheets laughing and talking, but then they’d kind of brushed it aside. Finished the hunt and then didn’t really talk about it because they parted to go about their lives separately again.

“Better than Lance then?” Dean asked her.

It was supposed to be a playful comment, but Lance had been her High School sweetheart and for some reason, Dean hated him. Dean knew why he did, but Lana had never been able to figure out why that tone always hit Dean’s voice when he mentioned his name. She and Lance had dated as long as Sam and Lily had, and yet their relationship had ended, and not in a good way. They hadn’t even been friends again...well, ever really. Cordial now, sure, but definitely not the way it had been in High School.

“Your rivalry with Lance still puzzles me,” she responded, sipping her whiskey sour and then looking at him. “I mean, didn’t you pick the damn ring out with him?”

“I didn’t fucking _want_ to,” Dean replied, and he sighed because he didn’t want to do this. Not here. Not now. Not ever. “Forget I said it.”

Lana shook her head. “No. Look, my 18th birthday, I asked you to come because I missed you. It had been two years since I thought you were going to kiss me, and then you just took off with Sam and your Dad. Sam had taken off, you guys weren’t speaking, he couldn’t make it, and I wanted you to be there. I wanted to see you, and somehow, you took the boyfriend I had been trying to break up with for _months_ , ring shopping so he could propose at my fucking graduation party and then hate me because I turned him down. He still thinks it’s because you sabotaged the ring shopping.”

“That I definitely didn’t do,” Dean told her, setting his beer down and then closing his eyes before he looked at her. “I freaked. You were 16, I was too old for you, but we were like this close and you smelled so good, Lanni. Of course I panicked and took off. I was supposed to be an adult and you were still…”

He was only four years older than her, but what he was saying had a lot of merit to it since she had been a minor at the time, and she nodded, glad they were talking about it. She didn’t know where the conversation was going to go, but she had always wondered about it. Lana and Dean had been text close for a long time, and he had _known_ that she was unsure about Lance before he got shang-haied into the ring shopping that day.

“I came because I missed you, and I knew you were kind of in the dumps,” Dean continued, sipping his beer and then looking at the bar for a moment. “Annie and Florence were fighting and I remember Lance running into me in the hall. He had this idea in his head that you liked me, but he knew you loved him and he wanted to provide for you. I knew you’d been feeling wary of everything, but he was the stability I also knew you wanted.”

Lana sighed and shook her head. “I’ve liked you for a long time, but you were my best friend’s older brother, you know? Not in some creepy porn way, but like, you were the older guy who was good with girls and treated your brother nice, and ugh...when I was 14 I realized I had a thing for you. When I was 16, I had just started dating Lance and you had to come and almost kiss me. For a long time I thought I’d imagined it, but…I felt really bad.”

“Well yeah, it’s called emotional cheating,” Dean told her, laughing when she hit his arm. “I’m kidding! I know you liked him too.”

“Not enough,” Lana admitted, shaking her head and blushing a bit. “Sex with him was awkward at best. Not bad, mind you, but I had more chemistry with the guy I banged on a hunt 6 months after Lance and I broke up. Also, don’t look at me like that, okay? You are only the third guy I’ve ever slept with and I know for a fact that you’re in the double digits.”

Dean chuckled, shaking his head. “I don’t have as high a count as you think, but I know. You have always been one of the most emotional people I’ve ever met, and I mean that as a compliment, okay? It doesn’t surprise me that you prefer an emotional connection over just a random hookup. So...why are you flirting with the bartender?”

“Because it isn’t a crime to flirt,” she replied, both of them smiling at each other. “You picked a good ring, by the way. It wasn’t the ring that made Lance and I fall apart, it was knowing he wanted to settle down and get a cat and raise children.”

“I don’t know, Lanni: you strike me as a kid person,” Dean tilted his head to the side.

Lana laughed and then smiled at him. “Love kids but I’m a dog person.”

That made Dean laugh, both of them deciding that was _way too much_ personal sharing for the night, and instead they started to rate patrons in the bar. They couldn’t take anyone back to the motel, and while they could have definitely gone back to someone else’s place, their talk had taken an emotional toll. There was still a lot to talk about, but right now they just didn’t want to deal with their feelings, and that suited them just fine.

\-----

Sam and Lily had really needed to have some space, not because they didn’t like having Lana and Dean around, but because they needed time for _them_. It hadn’t been hard to get the two out either, because Lily and Lana had a system now, and Lily humed into the kiss Sam pressed to her lips as she wrapped her legs around his waist while he set a pace with each thrust. Then Sam’s nose nuzzled her neck, and he smiled, nipping at Lily’s neck as she arched against him.

They didn’t get a lot of time for this lately, even with the system, and Sam wanted it to last for as long as he could make it, letting himself revel in every sound that slipped out of her. Lily’s fingers threaded through Sam’s hair and when his lips found hers again, she nipped at his lip, Sam groaning and moving his hips in time more.

He smiled as Lily’s fingers ran along his muscled, naked body, trying to take control and giggling when Sam turned them over. To get the right angle, Lily gripped the headboard as she moved on top of him, reveling in Sam’s sounds as much as he reveled in hers, both of them finding the right pace, his name on her lips as she hit her peak, Sam going over the edge at the same exact time. Nothing felt better to her than them both crying out at the same time, hearts pounding against each other, skin to skin.

“You’re so beautiful,” Sam told her, sitting up to press kisses to her face and neck lovingly as Lily tried to catch her breath. “God, I love you.” He just wanted her to know that he loved her, his lips meeting her as he kept her cradled in his arms.

Smiling, Lily stroked Sam’s hair, snuggling into him as he kept her close to him. “I love you too,” she promised, nuzzling his wet nose with hers as they sat there. “You have not lost your touch.”

“I would like to think not,” Sam laughed, nuzzling her nose again and then laying back to lay with her and run his fingers through her hair. He loved moments like this where he could just settle up with her skin on skin and let her know what she meant to him.

“Do you remember before all this hunting?” Lily asked, laughing a little. “I mean, before you got back into hunting, and I got into it.”

Sam laughed and nodded, looking at her as she rested her head on his chest to hear his heartbeat. “We had a lot of fun, pretending life was normal.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” Lily admitted, smiling at him. “You ever wish we could go back?”

“Sometimes,” Sam told her, “but I also kind of like that we’ve got Lana and Dean around.”

Lily liked it too, especially because they were going to have to deal with supernatural beings for a long time. It was better to do it as their group of four, than it was to do it alone, and right now she needed to know that everyone was alright. At this moment, she could just enjoy being with Sam though, and she loved this.

“I am glad we get time like this,” Lily told him, sighing when she heard her phone buzz. Reaching over, she looked at the message and then she took a breath. “I guess that we’re going to work on a nice little hunt that your brother found.”

“So we have to get up and get dressed?” Sam asked her, pouting a little and smiling when she kissed him.

Lily smiled and nodded. “Yep, but we can shower together first.”

Sam liked that idea, smiling at his girlfriend and kissing her a little more before they both got up and headed into the motel bathroom to shower together. Lana knocked on the door before she entered, taking a deep breath as she looked around and then laughing as she looked at Dean with his hand over his eyes.

“Oh my God, you can look--they’re in the shower,” Lana laughed, shutting the door behind them and going to the laptop to look things up. “So, your father sent these coordinates?”

Dean nodded at her. “Yeah. Here I was starting to think he was ignoring us or really, truly missing, but I guess he’s just doing his own thing. So...what information did you get?”

“It is Roosevelt Asylum, said to be haunted with the spirits of it’s patients, and if you spend the night there...you die,” Lana explained and then took a breath. “Says here that some teenagers were hiding out there and the cops went in. Then, an otherwise adjusted cop goes home, shoots his wife and then himself.”

“Do you really think that Sam is going to let us go to Rockford, Illinois without a fuss?” Dean asked slowly, sitting on a bed.

Lana shrugged her shoulders. “We’ve got Lily, remember? She’ll have him go with us.”

\-----

Once John got to Bobby’s, he was surprised to see Florence, but he was glad that she was there because they could all talk. After seeing Missouri, there were things that he wanted to know, and the only person that he could ask was Florence. After all, she had known Mary and sometimes, John had been convinced that they had known each other really, really well.

“Coffee?” Florence asked him, smiling when he nodded and reached for a cup.

“I saw Missouri, and the boys were there...with Lana and Lily,” John explained before he took a sip and then looked at her.

Florence nodded slowly. “Yes, that has been their grouping. I mean we saw it coming from a mile away. Lana and Dean have been orbiting each other since they were teenagers, and Lana and Sam have been best friends for as long as I can remember.”

“Mary’s spirit was in the old house,” John put simply, wanting Florence to know why he was bringing it all up. “The demon that killed Mary left such a wound on the old house that it attracted a poltergeist. It attacked the family that moved in and the boys tried to stop it. Mary saved them...and the more I learn about this demon, the more I’m positive that I need to stop what is happening. I need to stop what happened to my youngest son.”

It was that last piece that made Florence make a face, and suddenly Bobby had no idea what was going on. He was a little lost, but he had a feeling that he was about to learn a lot more than he wanted, and it was because of the look on Florence’s face. When she opened up her mouth, however, neither John nor Bobby were expecting what was going to come next.

“Mary made a deal,” Florence explained, shaking her head as sadness crept over her features. “Do you remember how freaked out you were that night when Mary’s parents died? You thought that shock made you forget what happened?” she nodded when John nodded at her. “You died. You died and that demon was there to take advantage of the situation and force her to make a deal to bring you back to life. She couldn’t live without you, so she told him that she would make the deal. Mary said later that he was vague. That all he had said was he would come back to collect in ten years.”

John nodded slowly. “When he came to Sam.”

“Yeah. Whatever he did to Sam--” Florence started to say.

“--He bled into his mouth,” John told her, shaking his head a little. “I ran into another kid whose mother was talking about a yellow eyed demon. Her kid was having dreams...found out what happened, and killed themselves.”

Florence’s eyes widened. “He did what?”

“Why would he bleed in their mouths?” Bobby asked slowly.

“That’s where the powers come from…” Florence said with a gentle nod.

That meant that Lana was so much more than just some accident with a demon: she was a Plan B. Whatever it was that Azazel had been planning, he hadn’t planned to have a child of his very own. He hadn’t expected a child that had demon blood coursing through her veins, to be wandering around where he couldn’t track her down to _use her_.

“John, we have a serious problem,” Florence said, shaking her head. “Not because of Sam. I...I don’t know what to do about the psychics. I don’t know what Sam can even do, or what any of them can do, but I’ve been lying about Lana for too long.”

Bobby looked directly at her. “Flor, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about, I had been hunting that bastard since he killed John and then forced Mary into that damn deal, and he tricked me,” Florence explained, shaking her head. “Lana is his biological child. I didn’t know until I looked down at the baby in my arms and her eyes flashed yellow. Now this? I don’t know what he’s doing, but it’s something big.”

John and Bobby knew why they had never heard this before, because they’d be wary of that child every day. Growing up, however, Lana had been one of the sweetest children, and one of the best hunters. Sure, she saw things in shades of grey and not black and white, but that didn’t mean a thing. Knowing her, they knew she wasn’t ‘evil’, but at the same time, anything could happen. What did demon blood mean?

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Flor, but until I know what this means, I’m feeling a little unsteady about Lana and Dean,” John explained firmly.

\-----

Sam wasn’t the happiest to just follow John’s directions when he hadn’t even been trying to contact them the way Florence kept in touch with Lana, but at the same time, a part of him got it. Lana had told them that Florence knew what she was, so of course her mother was keeping an eye on her, even if she wasn’t _with_ her.

“So, this guy that shot his wife,” Lily began from the back seat with Sam. “I mean this sucks. They were even talking about kids according to the reports. So he just goes into this place, goes crazy, and then shoots the woman he’s making a future with?”

Dean nodded slowly. “That’s a hazard of the job.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t make it work though,” Lana said quickly, giving Dean a look. “If he had been more versed in this world and known what to expect, he wouldn’t have gone into a haunted place to begin with, without being prepared.”

“So you’re not worried that we’re about to walk into a trap?” Lily asked, nodding when Lana shook her head. “Fine, but we should have a buddy system because the last thing I need is one of us trying to kill us all.”

She wasn’t wrong, and when they got to the place, Lana sighed as she looked at it, and Lily shivered. This was the kind of place they probably shouldn’t even be bringing her to because of the feelings that she got when she was in places like this, but Lana thought she should come. Sam couldn’t protect her from _everything_ , and Lana wanted Lily to really feel like she was part of it, since she was still new to hunting.

“So apparently the cops chased the kids here....into the south wing,” Sam explained, all of them heading in and running their flashlights over everything.

Dean nodded slowly as he flipped through John’s journal. “South wing, huh? Wait a second. 1972. Three kids broke into the south wing, only one survived. Way he tells it, one of his friends went nuts and started lighting up the place.”

“So whatever's going on, the south wing is the heart of it,” Sam mused out loud as they continued.

“Okay, but then why aren’t more people dying? I mean teenagers are stupid--especially ones that don’t have hunting in their genes,” Lana explained, shaking her head.

Lily piped up too. “She’s right. Kids do all kinds of dumb stuff on dares, _especially_ when places are rumored to be haunted.”

“Looks like the doors are usually chained,” Sam told them, breaking the chains that they came to. Which is only ever people out...or to keep something in.”

Lily didn’t seem to be having a great time in here either, her senses going a little haywire because of all the spirits. There was definitely more than one, and she wasn’t feeling entirely like herself because she could sense so much pain in this place. It was why Sam hadn’t wanted her to come, but she was a big girl, and she didn’t want to have to just wait in the car until they came back out.

“This isn’t even reading anything,” Lana said as she looked at the EMF reader that Dean was holding. “I mean I know that most spirits aren’t out during certain parts of the day but maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t really wanna see any of these people. These kinds of places were awful.”

“Yeah,” Dean whistled. “Electro-shock. Lobotomies. Kinda like my man Jack in ‘ _Cuckoo's Nest_ ’.”

Lana laughed even though Sam rolled his eyes. “You’re all kinds of sexy, you know that?”

Her tone suggested she was kidding, but she and Dean shared a look before they continued to look around. They still weren’t finding anything even though Lily was having her feelings, and Sam just wanted to get them out of there as soon as they could. At the same time, how could they leave when they hadn’t even found anything?

“Their traces are here,” Lily shuddered, looking around. “And something truly dark.”

Sam reached for her, resting his hand on the small of her back. “I’m right here, when things feel too intense, please let me know.”

“Sam,” Dean said, shaking his head a little. “Munchkin’s got this.”

“Maybe it’s ghost’s possessing people,” Lana decided to say, trying to change the subject. “Or maybe it’s more like spirits driving them insane.”

“Kinda like my man Jack in ‘ _The Shining_ ’,” Dean grinned, wiggling his eyebrows at Lana when she smirked at him.

Sam took a deep breath. “So are we going to talk about Dad not being here?”

Dean looked at his brother and shook his head. He didn’t want to question their father, and honestly Lana couldn’t blame him. At the same time, Lily couldn’t blame Sam for being mad, and that came just from knowing the boys the way that they did. Intimately, in ways that the other didn’t know them.

“He gave us an order,” Dean told Sam, shrugging his shoulders. “So we’re following them.”

Sam shook his head. “So we always gotta follow his orders?”

Lily reached over and took Sam’s hand. “Sam, we’re here already.”

Dean gave Sam a frustrated look, and then they decided to drop the subject and instead find out more about this west wing. Lana and Lily didn’t want to be here either, but this was something that Dean felt they had to do, and the girls wanted the boys to figure this out. They had been fighting a lot lately, and John really did need to talk to his children. For a little while there, they had thought he was dead, and here he was texting them orders.

After a while of trying to figure things out, they left to go and do some more research, needing to learn more about Dr. Sanford Ellicott. He was the focal point of the incident here, the dead chief psychiatrist who had done all of those terrible experiments on the dead. The South Wing was where they housed the psychotics...the criminally insane. One night in ‘64, they rioted, attacking the staff and each other and it got really gory, which was what Lily had been feeling.

“Some of the bodies were never even recovered, including our chief of staff: Ellicott,” Sam explained, shaking his head.

Lily made a face. “What do you mean, ‘never recovered’?”

“Cops scoured every inch of the place but I guess the patients must’ve...stuffed the bodies somewhere hidden,” Sam explained to her. “So, they transferred all the remaining patients and closed the hospital down.”

“That would explain the chaos then. We’ve got a bunch of violent deaths and a bunch of unrecovered bodies, which means a bunch of angry spirits,” Lana agreed, groaning a little. “Lily, maybe you shouldn’t come in this time. If we go back tonight, they’ll be roaming.”

Lily made a face at that. “I don’t want to be left out. I can handle it. Besides, how will I ever learn to control this if I don’t practice?”

They knew she was right, so Lana piped up that her feelings could be useful, and then they decided to head back out. When they got there, they went in through the back, Sam holding a video camera and a flashlight, the girls with flashlights too, Dean holding the EMF meter.

“Well damn--now the EMF is going off,” Lana said, looking over at Lily.

Lily swallowed, trying to keep a handle on herself. “They’re everywhere. So we have to be ready to salt and burn bodies. They’re hidden in here somewhere.”

“And they’re probably pissed off,” Lana added in, shaking her head. “We might need to split up in pairs.”

“I’ll go with Lily,” Sam piped up, nodding at them. “Just pay attention to the hunt.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Very funny, Sammy.”

The boys exchanged a look and then they split up, Lana and Dean trying to find any hidden rooms, Sam and Lily running into a spirit. Sam started to freak out, but Lily wasn’t feeling any hostility from her. So when Sam started calling out for Dean, who had the salt gun, Lily tried to stop him.

“No! She isn’t trying to hurt you!” Lily exclaimed as Dean and Lana came running in, Dean shooting the ghost and it vanishing.

Sam paused as he straightened up. “What do you mean she wasn’t trying to hurt me?”

“She didn’t feel violent,” Lily said, shaking her head.

“Looked pretty aggro from where I was standing,” Dean told her, but a sound made them all stop, and then turn to go and find the sound.

Turned out that a teenager named Kathering, and her boyfriend Gavin, had come in here to see if the place was really haunted. Then they had gotten separated, and she was hiding and crying, Lana moving to her to wrap her arms around her and try to tell her that things would be okay. This wasn’t their first time getting a hunt interrupted, but Lana was a little worried regardless that there was an innocent involved now.

“Lily will get you some place safe,” Dean offered, shaking his head.

She shook hers too. “No! No. I’m not going to leave without Gavin. I’m coming with you.”

“Look, no offense, but this is dangerous. People have died coming in here just to test out if this place was haunted or not,” Lana told her, her and Dean making eye contact.

Lily took a breath. “Sam and I will go look for Gavin too then, and if you see anything else, holler. We have enough salt and fire between us.”

“Fine, but be safe,” Lana smiled a little before she turned to Katherine. “You’ve seen horror movies before, right?”

Dean nodded, turning to face Katherine as she nodded too. “Do me a favor. Next time you see one? Pay attention. When someone says a place is haunted...don’t go in!”

“That’s literally how people die,” Lana added, shaking her head and then leading the way.

At least it wasn’t all for nothing, because Sam and Lily came across Gavin, who was freaking out. He was a little happier when he heard that they had found his girlfriend, but then he was talking a mile a minute about how one of the patients had _kissed him_. Sam looked at Lily, who gave him an ‘I told you so’ look, and he just nodded at her. The spirits weren’t trying to kill them, they were trying to get through to them...so why the deaths?

It didn’t really make a lot of sense.

What was it that they were trying to tell them anyway? Lily had high hopes that it was to tell them where some of the bodies were hidden, but screaming made them run down the hall again. Katherine had been dragged into a room by a ghost, and she was screaming, Dean and Lana trying to open the door, Lana even trying to use her gifts.

“Kat?” Gavin asked in a panic.

Lily nodded at that. “Kat? Stop running! They’re trying to tell us something!”

“Let it tell _you_ something!” Katherine responded in a scared voice.

“Damn it, Kat, you came in here looking for ghosts and you found one! It isn’t trying to hurt you, just listen to it!” Lana called through the door.

They didn’t even know if this was going to work, but after a moment the screaming stopped and they paused. It was eerie, but soon the door opened and Katherine came out, looking scared but oddly calm too. Gavin threw his arms around her to see if she was okay, and she told them that the ghost whispered ‘137’ into her ear.

“Room number,” Sam and Dean said together.

Lily nodded slowly. “Maybe that’s where we need to go then.”

“You two get them out of here, and Lanni and I will find Room 137,” Dean told Sam and Lily, nodding at them. “They need to be out of here.”

Even though Lily hated having to leave, she didn’t mind doing it to save innocents. Besides, they had a lot of questions about this whole situation, and Sam admitted it was their day job. Katherine asked them why they would want to do this at all, and Lily saw the look on Sam’s face. They had been thinking about a truly normal life together, and then the demon had come and ruined all of that for them. Everything that they had been working towards, had been ripped right from underneath them, and Lily wasn’t sure if they would even get that back because they just kept getting deeper and deeper into this.

She was brought out of her thoughts, by the realization that the doors wouldn’t open and the windows were all barred: they were trapped.

Meanwhile, Lana and Dean had gotten to Room 137, and it turned out there were cabinets pushed over and papers everywhere. Furniture was broken, the walls were stained, but Lana wanted to look through it. It had to hold files of some sort, or why else would the ghosts want them to come here and look for things?

“Well this is great,” Lana said, bending over and then straightening up when Dean whistled. “We are here to find bodies to salt and burn, so stop looking at my ass. You can enjoy it later.”

Dean smirked at that. “Oh can I?”

“Keep looking,” Lana responded, rolling her eyes playfully.

“Oh! A panel,” Dean exclaimed, prying it off and finding a satchel of papers. “This is why I get paid the big bucks.”

“Looks like a journal,” Lana tilted her head as she looked at the pictures of medical instruments and charts over Dean’s shoulder. “Yikes...gruesome…”

“Well all work and no play makes Dr. Ellicott a very dull boy,” Dean agreed, both of them jolting when they heard a noise.

Lana made a face. “We need to get out of here and now.”

Dean nodded, following her just as Sam got a call from Dean to meet him in the basement. So, Sam passed the gun off to Lily, who didn’t want Sam to go on his own, but when it came to hunting, the task of protecting innocents always seemed to fall to her. Giving her a kiss, Sam nodded and then headed off, frantically looking for his brother because he had said the ghost had gotten to him.

Swinging the door open, he didn’t find his brother, only a creepy room that forced his flashlight to turn off. He raised the other gun when he heard a noise, but he was caught off guard by an old beaten up man with ragged hair and clothes, who grabbed his face, his hands glowing.

“Don’t be afraid,” the ghost said, “I’m going to make you all better.”

\-----

After hearing about Lana, John was worried about the kind of company that his children were keeping. It also made him wonder about his late wife because she and Florence had been friends for a very long time. How did Florence keep all of this from her? Why was it that John felt responsible for this whole deal that Mary had made?

“What do you think about all of this, Bobby?” John asked him, the two men enjoying a beer after Florence had left to give them space.

Bobby shrugged his shoulders. “I think we all assumed Lana was different, we just didn’t know how different.”

“Yes,” John admitted, glancing at him. “However, I meant about the deal.”

“I think Mary loved you, and she couldn’t live with you dead,” Bobby told him, but then he took a deep breath. “You want to know how much she knew, don’t you?”

John nodded slowly. “She knew at least about demons and never let on that she did. We had such a normal life in Lawrence. The kids, my job at the garage--Saturdays out with Alan. I just didn’t realize that Florence knew so much.”

Still, John had crossed that bridge when he had come to it when Mary had been murdered. Now, he was learning all of these things about demons that he just didn’t want to know, but at the same time he wanted the whole truth. He felt like his children deserved the truth, so he had to figure it out so that he could tell it to them.

Sometimes, John regretted how things had unfolded after that night when he had found Mary pinned to the ceiling. He still remembered that smell of burning flesh, and the heat of the flames, and how terrified Mary had looked as she burned. It had always felt like a personal attack, but now he was finding out that it had all been so much more personal than he had thought.

“How much do you think she knew from Florence?” John asked slowly. “They grew up together. Florence was obsessed with hunting the demon down--she still is. That had to have bled over at some point.”

Bobby nodded slowly. “Yeah, but you didn’t ask the one person that could have told you. You let her walk out that door to another hunt.”

“Part of me was afraid of what I’d hear,” John admitted, shaking his head and sucking down some of his beer. Turning to his friend, he took a breath. “What about you? Don’t pretend that I’m stupid...I know you and Florence are testing the waters.”

“I figured,” Bobby chuckling, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m not worried about Lana, if that’s what you’re fishing for, John. I trust her with my life. She’s gotten me out of a jam or two and vice versa, so what are you really worried about? You’ve seen her grow up quite a bit too.”

“Yeah, but now this connection to the demon? I don’t want that connection to put the boys into harm’s way.” John explained with a shake of his head.

\-----

“Lily?” Lana called out, feeling relieved when she saw her, but then getting alert. “I assume these two are still here because we’re trapped?”

Lily nodded. “Yeah, but Sam got a call from you to go to the basement because the ghost...well crap.”

“A literal phantom call,” Lana said, turning to Dean. “What if it’s Ellicott? I mean we saw the journal. He was experimenting and they rose up, and now what if he’s got Sam? We have to be ready for anything.”

“I’m coming with you,” Lily explained, shaking her head when Lana and Dean started to protest. “No. Sam is everything to me, do you understand? I am not letting some torture obsessed ghost hurt him if I can help it.”

Lana understood what she was saying and nodded. “Alright. Go with Dean and I will stay here. Just watch your back, and watch Dean’s.”

There was something in the way that Lana said that, that made Lily wonder, but she just nodded and went with Dean down to the basement to try and find Sam. The whole place was deserted and incredibly scary, not to mention dirty. Lily had a whole set of feelings, and they were worse when they actually ran into Sam. He felt like Sam, but he felt _off_.

“I think I know who we need to deal with: Dr. Ellicott. That’s what the spirits have been trying to tell us. You haven’t seen him, have you?” Dean asked him quickly as Lily moved to look him over to see if he was really okay.

Sam shook his head. “Haven’t seen him. How do you know it was him?”

“Lana and I found his log book. Apparently he was experimenting on his patients, awful stuff. Makes lobotomies look like a coupla aspirin,” Dean explained, shaking his head. “It’s why the riot happened, because the patients rioted up against him. So we have to figure out where a bunch of experimented on psychotic freaks hid this guy so we can salt and burn him.”

Lily nodded slowly. “It should let the other patients rest. Are you okay, Sam?”

“I’m fine,” Sam told her, but she wasn’t convinced. “If the police never found the body, then how do we?”

“The log book said he had some sort of hidden procedure room down here somewhere where he’d work on his patients. So, if I was a patient I’d drag his ass down here, do a little work on it myself. Sounds crazy but...par for the course.”

Sam nodded, but Lily still wasn’t convinced that everything was alright, and was even more confused when Dean found what looked like the door and Sam pointed his gun at him.

“Sam, put the gun down,” Lily told him, seeing blood trickle out of his nose. “What did Dr. Ellicott do to you?”

Sam shook his head. “I’m tired of this wild goose chase Dad is sending us on. I’m tired of taking orders when he should be here with us.”

“What are you going to do, Sam? Shoot us? The gun’s filled with rock salt, so it won’t kill us,” Dean pointed out, wishing Lily was somewhere safer.

“It’ll hurt like Hell though,” Sam responded, shooting Dean with the gun, the action causing him to fly backwards through the door.

He was winded, and Lily moved to him upon instinct, thoroughly surprised when Sam didn’t shoot her too. In fact, she was waiting for the moment to come, but Sam seemed a lot angrier at his brother than he was at her. Seemed like the aggression was very focused, and she needed to figure out how to salt and burn the bones.

“We gotta burn Ellicott's bones and all this will be over,” she whispered to herself.

Dean coughed, winded. “If we salt and burn the bones, you'll be back to normal.”

“I _am_ normal. I'm just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? ’Cause you're following Dad's orders like a good little solider? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval?” Sam asked his brother as Lily looked around to try and find the body.

“This isn't you talking, Sam,” Dean continued with a nod as he and Lily made eye contact.

He wanted to keep Sam talking long enough so that Lily could get the job done, so she tried to move with no sudden movements as Sam spoke. Moving slowly enough as Sam called Dean pathetic, and told him how upset he was that they’d been looking for their father for six months and weren’t any closer to his location than they had been.

Actually, Lily understood why Sam was so upset, but she didn’t feel like it was a good enough reason to be fighting like this over. Yes, he was influenced by the ghost, but the ghost wasn’t making him say these things, just making him violent over these things. Even without Ellicott’s influence, Sam was upset that their father was eluding them, and Lily thought that he was justified in his feelings...just not when those feelings were being fed off of like this.

“Well, if you’re going to kill me, Sam, then let me make it easier for you,” Dean explained, holding his Smith & Wesson toward Sam. “Take it. Real bullets are gonna work a Hell of a lot better than rock salt.”

Sam took the gun, which made Lily panic, but Dean had handed his brother a gun that wasn’t loaded--still unnerved them all that he tried to shoot. Then he got up to try and knock Sam out as Lily took the commotion to open up a closed cupboard. She made a face when she saw the mummified corpse and she flinched, gagging and feeling like she was going to puke. How did the other three make this look so much easier?

“This is so gross,” Lily whispered, grabbing the salt and the kerosene and then screaming when the ghost of Ellicott showed up as Dean got Sam on the ground, and pressed his hands to Dean’s face. He was going to do the same thing to Dean that he did to Sam, and Lily hurriedly took the lighter out of her pocket, fumbling once and then twice, and as the electricity started to go through Dean, she got a flame and lit the dead body on fire. “Yes!”

She felt like she’d been useful and she watched the ghost burn up to ash, then moved toward Sam, who was stirring on the floor. Dean reached out to hold her back for a moment just in case it wasn’t over, but Lily sensed that it was. They were going to have to talk about this, most definitely, but as far as the ghosts were concerned, they could be at rest with Ellicott gone.

“Feel violent anymore?” Lily asked cautiously.

Sam shook his head and rubbed his jaw where Dean had punched him out. “No.”

“Good. Because that would be awkward,” Dean responded, shaking his head.

\-----

When everyone congregated back together, Lana opened up the doors and Katherine and Gavin thanked them for what they’d done. Then the four hunters headed toward the Impala, Sam stopping Dean as the girls made it to the car first. He felt terrible for what had transpired inside of the asylum, and he really didn’t know what to do to make it up to Dean.

“I said some really awful things back there and I’m sorry,” Sam told him.

Dean glanced at him. “You remember all that?”

“Yeah, and I didn’t mean any of it,” Sam tried, really wanting to put this behind them.

“You didn’t?” Dean asked him slowly.

“No, of course not! Do we need to talk about this?” Sam asked him suddenly.

Lily piped up as they got closer to the Impala. “I mean, maybe we should.”

“Nah, Munchkin. I'm not really in the sharing and caring kinda mood. I just wanna get some sleep.

That wasn’t what Lily wanted to hear, and the frown made Sam feel like there was a pit in his stomach, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into this right now either. So the four piled into the car and headed for the motel to get some rest, Lily and Sam both noting that Lana and Dean seemed to be sharing a bed. That wasn’t the typical arrangement, but they told the other two that they were just tired and didn’t have the energy to change things.

Lily wanted to talk about that too in the morning, but she was tired, and she snuggled up to Sam as they turned the lights out. He needed to know that she was there for him if he needed her, and she hoped that between the two of them, she and Lana could convince the two boys to talk about how they were feeling. It would be like pulling teeth, but she was pretty convinced that they could make it work.

In the middle of the night, however, Dean’s phone started ringing, but Sam was the only one that woke up to answer it. He was groggy and he just wanted the ringing to stop, but suddenly he was sitting up in the bed, Lily stirring a little but still asleep.

“Dad?”


End file.
